Asaduddin Owaisi announces the first list of six candidates, says three others will be named soon.
AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi. (File pic/South First)
The AIMIM sprang a surprise on Friday, 3 November, saying it would field candidates in nine constituencies, including Jubilee Hills, for the 30 November Telangana Assembly elections.
The decision to field a candidate in the Jubilee Hills Assembly segment is seen as googly at former cricketer-turned-politician Mohammad Azharuddin, the Congress candidate. The move has been viewed as a ploy to bowl a tight line to Azharuddin, forcing him to play on the back foot.
The BRS has re-nominated its sitting MLA Maganti Gopinath from Jubilee Hills, and the AIMIM contesting from the segment might help him.
Addressing a news conference in Hyderabad on Friday, Asaduddin Owaisi, the president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), said the party would be contesting from nine out of the state’s 119 Assembly constituencies.
Apart from the existing seven constituencies that the party now represents, it would also contest from Jubilee Hills and Rajendranagar, he said.
Owaisi made the announcement while releasing the AIMIM’s first list of six candidates.
Veteran leaders Syed Ahmed Pasha Quadri and Mumtaz Ahmed Khan would not be in the fray this time, he said
The candidates on the first list are:
The AIMIM will announce its candidates in Bahadurpura, Rajendranagar and Jubilee Hills constituencies later.
Owaisi announced that veteran leader Syed Ahmed Pasha Quadri would not be contesting in the elections due to personal reasons.
“Syed Ahmed Pasha Quadri has been with the party for years. He was also a dear friend of Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi. At a young age, I used to go around with Ahmed Pasha to the districts of (United) Andhra Pradesh. I believe that Ahmed Pasha will guide in making appropriate decisions,” the Hyderabad MP said.
Quadri has been a legislator since 2004, first from the Charminar Assembly segment. He was elected from Yakutpura in 2018. In the previous election, he got 69,595 votes, with a vote share of 49.07 percent.
Another veteran, Mumtaz Ahmed Khan, too, would not be contesting. He was a member of the Telangana Legislative Assembly from Charminar Constituency from 1994 to 1999. He was a member of the Majlis Bachao Tehreek and joined the AIMIM in 1999.
“When Ahmed Khan joined the AIMIM, I was the only MLA. Then we two as MLAs kept winning the elections and now that he is staying abroad due to personal reasons I wish him all luck,” Owaisi added.
Owaisi said both the BJP and Congress were functioning based on the ‘Hindutva’ ideology.
Taking a jibe at the Congress’s Madhya Pradesh chief Kamal Nath’s statement that the BJP could not claim credit for the Ram temple in Ayodhya and that Rajiv Gandhi’s role should not be forgotten, Owaisi shared that in January 2024, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was going for “some inauguration”, he should take Rahul Gandhi along with him.
On the development in the party-represented segments, he said, “Permission has been granted to build a building for the Osmania Hospital. The pending works of metro services have started and the work of the necessary roads will be initiated in the coming years.”
He claimed that ever since the formation of Telangana, lesser number of curfews were imposed on the state.
“Ever since the formation of Telangana in 2014, curfews were imposed twice. One during the disturbance in Bhainsa, which was a one-night curfew. The other was during the Covid-19 pandemic. Earlier, when the Congress and other parties were in power from 1990 till 2012, there have been 11 incidents of curfew being imposed, spanning a total of 113 days,” he said.
“Even sensitive districts like Nizamabad, Medak, Nalgonda, Karimnagar, Mahabubnagar, Rangareddy, and Adilabad have remained peaceful. He hoped that the voters would remember the development activities undertaken when they exercise their franchise on 30 November.
An AIMIM source said that the party would not be supporting any political outfit but would soon announce its candidate in Jubilee Hills.
“We have been contesting from Rajendra Nagar for years now. In Jubilee Hills, we supported the TRS in 2018. We had contested from Jubilee Hills in 2014, and our candidate Naveen Yadav V got 41,656 votes and finished second to Maganti Gopinath of the TDP,” he told South First, requesting anonymity.
“Now, the BRS has announced him as its candidate. We decided to field a candidate in Jubilee Hills since we realised that we have the potential to fight for the seat,” he added.
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