As the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured a comfortable majority in both Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi said on Monday that “the results show that Muslim marginalisation has increased in Gujarat”.
Pointing that leaders from both the BJP and the Congress – Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi – went from one mandir from another to reach out to the voters, Owaisi said, “You can’t defeat BJP by becoming another BJP. You need to show the difference between you and the BJP.”
Targeting the campaign of Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Owaisi added, “It was a wonderful opportunity for the Congress to defeat the BJP in Gujarat but it failed.” He further pointed that even in Surat, which is a hub of traders, the BJP won despite the uproar by the opposition over Goods and Services Tax (GST).
Owaisi conceded that the BJP was working like a machine in the country, calling for a joint front against the ruling party. “Be it Akhilesh Yadav, or Asaduddin Owaisi, or Mamata Banerjee, no one can defeat the BJP being separate. We need united front against the BJP to defeat it,” said Owaisi.
The AIMIM leader also had a word of caution for the BJP, which is on a winning spree. Recalling that former prime ministers “Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were voted out of power by the people during the peak of their political career”, Owaisi said that “whenever the opposition in the country has weakened, people of this democracy have themselves become the opposition and voted leaders and parties out of power”.
He added, “If BJP thinks it has done a great job in Gujarat, it needs to rethink. Will BJP always get votes in the name of Aurangzeb and Pakistan.”