Now it seems a fight to the finish. The controversial,firebrand Akbaruddin Owaisi, Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) floor leader inthe state assembly and MLA of Chandrayangutta constituency in the old city ofHyderabad, has dared to bare the real face of his party. The aftermath of hiscommunally surcharged address, now a rage both offline and online, seems toclearly indicate its need to go on the offensive, as far as its brand ofpolitics is concerned.
With cases being filed under different sections all over thecountry, including New Delhi, and as howls of protest from secularists andrightist politicians reach a crescendo, politics in Andhra Pradesh is onceagain facing a double whammy of communal cacophony and the continuing suspenseover the announcement of a separate Telangana.
Communal politics is old hat in Hyderabad, in fact itssustenance in a way for a long time now. Every party in power, be it Congressor Telugu Desam, has milked its advantage. This city, with a Muslim populationcomprising around 40 percent out of the total 80 lakh, is arguably the urbanlocation with maximum number of Muslims in India. Hence religious campaigning,done religiously every election, is in fact, brazen and accepted as a matter offact across the political set-up in the state capital.
The walled city has been in the hands of All IndiaMajlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) over nearly three decades, posting animpressive growth in the Deccan heartland and lately by winning seven out of 13assembly seats of the city in the 2009 elections. And of course, the Hyderabad Lok Sabha seathas been with them since the same time, a record of sorts in Indian politics.
Still, this kind of an incessant sniper fire from them,bordering on open warfare and misplaced bravado, which had begun coincidingwith the Diwali festival two months ago, is new even to the bigots who haveseen nothing of this nature ever. Speculations are that MIM has its ownpolitical compulsions, the need to be on guard to adapt to changing equationson the ground with regard to the centre’s impending announcement on Telangana,and above all, fighting fellow Muslim politicians in their own backyard whohave kept on a relentless attack on them.
The pace at which the Kiran Kumar Reddy government took upthe issue is surely under the scanner. What has come as a surprise, however, isthe affirmative action taken on MIM’s hothead, which many see as the Congressparty’s signal to keep the hostility alive from its end. Local politicalsources are busy connecting the dots, starting from the time when the Reddygovernment and its law and order machinery firmly put down the Bhagyalakshmitemple controversy abutting Charminar, defusing it dexterously. This wasfollowed by the chief minister’s challenge to his newly estranged politicalpartners to try and win the number of seats they did in Hyderabad, without theCongress backing. Clearly, Kiran Kumar Reddy has kept the pressure on, is thepopular surmise.
All sections of the state machinery have added to the heat,from the speaker of the legislative assembly to the election commission whichmay get in into the act, sooner than later. State political pundits fear thatone contentious issue “ Telangana “ is being countered with another by thelatest challenger to Congress who has openly identified with its other rival,the formidable Jagan Mohan Reddy and his YSR Congress.
