HYDERABAD: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) says it could be the first political party to crack the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) bastion that is the Old City of Hyderabad. “The average person on the street is unhappy with the MIM leadership. We will capitalise on such dynamics that are evolving,” Syed Zafar Islam, BJP’s Rajya Sabha member from Uttar Pradesh and a national spokesperson of his party, told Deccan Chronicle.
Islam, who is in the city for the ongoing BJP national executive meet, visited party representatives and workers from the Bahadurpura and Chandrayangutta constituencies as part of the party’s reach-out drive coinciding with the national executive meeting in the city. It may be recalled that the BJP tasked several of its leaders including MPs, former ministers and others to all the 119 Assembly constituencies in Telangana.
“The MIM leadership,” Islam said, “is currently at its weakest. If you ask the person on the street and not reveal you are a politician or a leader, you will hear people saying they are unhappy with the MIM leadership.”
He said the current mood among the BJP cadres and leaders in the Old City was that if the BJP could win in Rampur and Azamgarh in UP which have substantial Muslim populations, then, it could do the same here, too.
“We acknowledge that other parties have not cracked the MIM bastion in the Old City of Hyderabad, but that is because successive governments have joined hands with them (AIMIM), and did not fight the elections the way they should have been fought,” he said.
He said while there could be some false positive feedback from the party workers, this is accounted for through other means of checking the public pulse. “People have realised that the BJP has been able to safeguard the interests of minorities. When it comes to delivering on welfare schemes and programmes, we are agnostic, go by eligibility list, irrespective of which community a beneficiary belongs to,” he said. They were witnessing how a 'double engine sarkar' could benefit, as could be seen in the BIMARU states which were now progressing economically, he added.
He also said there was a lot of resentment against the present state government and how it did not keep its promises to the people but had been busy with its family rule, and how the family was actively engaged in corruption, creating wealth for themselves, neglecting the state, and not safeguarding the interests of the common man on the street.”
