Owaisi will have to flee from Telangana if BJP comes to power: Yogi Adityanath

Hyderabad, Dec 2: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday attacked All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi and said that if Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) comes to power in Telangana the latter will have to flee from the state.

"If BJP comes to power I assure you Owaisi will have to flee from Telangana, the same way Nizam was forced to flee from Hyderabad," the UP CM said, while addressing a rally in Hyderabad.

At another rally in Sangareddy, Adityanath accused the Congress of obstructing construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya and charged the Rahul Gandhi-led party and TRS with indulging in Muslim appeasement. "If anyone is creating obstruction in the way of construction of a grand temple in the birthplace of lord Ram, it's Congress, Congress," he said.

The BJP, he said, does not discriminate between caste, creed and religion while drafting policies. "Congress says if it forms government in Telangana it will provide area development funds to Muslims. Congress policies are divisive, with wrong intentions," Adityanath said.

Congress and TRS are "playing with" the interests of people in Telangana and once more they would make efforts to take the State towards "Nizamshahi", he alleged. "BJP did only development, but never did appeasement of anyone. Congress, TDP, TRS all do only dynastic politics. And Owaisi party also does only Muslim appeasement politics," Adityanath claimed.

Owaisi has been a staunch critic of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, who was once the poster boy of hardline right-wing groups. He had called out Yogi Adityanath over several issues, including the one saying many postures of "surya namaskar" in yoga closely resembled that of "namaz".

Yogi Adityanath's recent statement that the Congress needs just the votes of Muslims, irked Owaisi too. "You keep your Ali, for us Bajrang Bali will be enough," the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister reportedly said. Ali was a successor of the Prophet Muhammad. Owaisi had remarked that the Chief Minister had "crossed all limits".

The BJP - which won only 9 of Telangana's 119 seats in 2014 in is going it alone in the state after feelers sent by its state leaders to Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao for an alliance fell flat.