Asaduddin Owaisi 'locked' out of AMU by BJP

Lucknow, Mar 9: The BJP's Uttar Pradesh unit has managed to prevent Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) president Asaduddin Owaisi from addressing students of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) on Saturday.

Activists of the main opposition party staged demonstrations against the MIM chief in Aligarh on Friday, stressing that his visit to AMU would lead to law and order problems.

The BJP men also made it clear that they will not allow Asaduddin's brother Akbaruddin, who was sent to prison recently for his hate speech in Dec 2012, to come to the city famous for its lock making units.

In view of the protests, the AMU Students Union that had invited Asaduddin to a seminar on 'History of Aligarh college movement' decided to play safe. The union president Shahzad Alam said that they have "voluntarily decided to postpone the visit (of Asaduddin to AMU) because we do not want to do anything to disturb the communal amity in the state".

He said that the decision was taken in a meeting attended by District Magistrate Rajiv Routela and members of the students union on Friday night. According to Alam, a letter will be sent to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav so that he gets to know about the postponement of Asaduddin's visit to AMU.

"At the same time, we also expect that the state government would take cognisance of the fact that some organisations associated with the BJP have tried to vitiate the atmosphere by preventing AMU teachers, students and the University football team from participating in academic programmes and sporting events in some educational institutions of the city," Alam said.

Slamming the BJP for "wrongly" claiming that Asaduddin has been booked for making a hate speech, the student union leader pointed out that actually Akbaruddin Owaisi is facing charges for delivering more than one hate speech last year.

Police in Adilabad and Nizamabad districts of Andhra Pradesh have registered cases against him. In this connection, Akbaruddin was arrested from the Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad on Jan 8 and remained behind bars till Feb 17.

Asaduddin was also sent to jail by a court in Sangareddy town for abusing the then Medak Collector Anil Kumar Singhal during a MIM protest over road widening back in 2005.

Incidentally, AMU has clarified that the university was "not involved either in the invitation to Owaisi, nor are we associated with any decision leading to the postponement of his visit. The matter rests entirely with the AMU Students' Union and the District authorities".

OneIndia News (with PTI inputs)