All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) President and incumbent MP from the Hyderabad Lok Sabha constituency, Asaduddin Owaisi, is seeking a re-election from his party bastion in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He contested against BJP’s Bhagawanth Rao, Congress’s Firoz Khan and TRS’s Pusthe Srikanth.
Owaisi has won all the Lok Sabha elections from the constituency since 2004. The seat had been held by his father Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi for six consecutive terms since 1984. Owaisi took over from his father because of his ill health.
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Owaisi has been a bitter critic of the Narendra Modi government, repeatedly attacked the PM in the run up to the elections. In April, after BJP chief Amit Shah’s ‘Modi ki Air Force’ remark, Owaisi said, ”Modi ki Sena, Modi ki Air Force, Modi ka nuclear ‘pataka’. 5 saal mein jo sab desh ka tha, wo Modi ka ho gaya. Desh chala rahe the ya PUBG khel rahe the? (Modi’s army, Modi’s air force, Modi’s nuclear pataka. In these five years, everything that was the country’s has become Modi’s. Was he running the country or playing PUBG)”
He brought up the 2002 Gujarat riots, reminding Modi about them after the latter called the 1984 anti-Sikh riots a “horrendous genocide”. After the prime minister claimed that he had used digital cameras in 1988, Owaisi said that Modi could not be trusted with national security.
He has also backed actor-political Kamal Haasan’s Hindu terror remark. When asked about the controversy over the remark, he said, “Who killed the father of the nation?” Owaisi has been a trusted ally of Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao and has made clear that he supports his Federal Front plans. “The clouds are clear for the federal front as well as for KCR. KCR’s political radar is bang on target. He has made an apt beginning and it is an answer to all who had questioned KCR’s secular credentials. Due to KCR’s vision, people have started understanding that the federal front is an alternative for the country and is best for the country,” he said.