UP CM warns Owaisi: Followers of 'abba jaan', don't try to inflame passions over CAA

Lucknow/Kanpur, Nov 23: UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has once again used the term 'abba jaan' while threatening to take action against those who incite communal tension over the Citizenship Amendment act.

The BJP leader, without taking the name of AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi, who recently demanded the Centre to withdraw the law, warned the Hyderabad MP not to incite passion.

Addressing polling booth-level BJP leaders in Kanpur on Tuesday, Adityanath called Owaisi an agent of the Samajwadi Party. "I would like to warn the person who is once again is trying to incite feelings in the name of CAA. I am asking followers of 'chacha jaan' (uncle) and 'abba jaan' to listen carefully that if attempts are made to vitiate the atmosphere of the state by inciting feelings, the state government will deal with it strictly," the chief minister said, claiming that there used to be riots every "third or fourth day" in Uttar Pradesh earlier.

The 'abba jaan' comment is seen as a reference to the Muslim community in general.

"Everyone knows that Owaisi is inciting feelings as an agent of the SP. But now UP is not known for riots but as a riot-free state," he said.

The CM added the BJP government works for the development and does not patronise mafias. "It is a government that runs bulldozers on the chests of the mafias," he said in a reference to the demolition of property owned by criminals.

On Sunday, Owaisi demanded that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) should be withdrawn following the announcement by the Centre on the repeal of the agri laws. "The CAA is against the Constitution. If the BJP government does not take back this law, we will come out on the streets and another Shaheen Bagh will come up here," the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen leader said at a meeting in Barabanki. With inputs from PTI