MIM's Alliance With BJP No More A Secret: Congress

Leader Of Opposition in the Telangana Legislative Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir on Tuesday said that the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen's secret alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party was no more a secret.

Reacting to Gujarat BJP MLA Yatin Oza's statements that the MIM had a secret pact with the BJP during the Bihar elections, Shabbir Ali said that the Congress had exposed this long back.

In a media statement, Shabbir Ali said that the MIM had been acting as the "Muslim Morcha" of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar since the last general elections.

"In the guise of the Party's expansion, the MIM fielded its candidates for selected seats so as to split the non-BJP votes. In the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the MIM contested 24 seats. Although it won only two, it split the Muslim votes in other seats. The split directly helped the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance to win eight seats. It tried to implement the same strategy in the Bihar Assembly elections, but the MIM was outrightly rejected by the people of Bihar," the Congress leader said.

Shabbir Ali asked BJP President Amit Shah and MIM MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi to clarify the meeting which they had before the Bihar elections.

"The MIM contested the Bihar elections only to benefit the BJP. If Owaisi was serious, then the MIM would have contested in the whole of Bihar. Initially MIM president Asaduddin Owaisi announced that his Party would contest all 24 seats in the Muslim-dominated Seemanchal. Finally, it contested only six of the 243 constituencies in Bihar. All this was done at the instance of BJP leadership, to polarise the elections," he said.

"The Owaisi brothers, alongside the Sangh Parivar, are on a mission to divide the country on communal lines. By playing the Hindu-Muslim card, the BJP-MIM combine is aiming at political gains. They were successful in Maharashtra and failed in Bihar, and are now adopting a similar approach for the Uttar Pradesh elections. In Telangana, too, both BJP and MIM are complementing each other," he added.

Shabbir Ali also accused Asaduddin Owaisi of trying to gain political mileage out of issues like "Bharat Mata Ki Jai" and even the arrests made by NIA.

"The MIM tried to gain political mileage out of the terror attack in the holy Madina. It should have organised a massive protest in Hyderabad against the terror attack in Madina, but confined itself to a public meeting where speakers delivered irrelevant speeches targeting political parties, especially the Congress. They turned the protest meeting into a political event," he said.

The Congress leader also appealed to the Muslim religious leaders to seriously introspect on their stand towards the MIM, which was acting as an ally of the BJP. "Religious leaders should not allow any politician or Party to use them as tools. Owaisi is apparently holding all religious leaders of Hyderabad hostage, and is forcing them endorse all his actions," he alleged.