Dares her to come with evidence to prove her allegations right
Mumbai: President of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi Thursday threatened to file a defamation case against Congress MLA from Sholapur Praniti Shinde if she did not apologise for dubbing the MIM a 'treasonous and anti-National political party.'
"The MIM is a registered political party, and the party and its leaders are part of the nation building programs like others in the country", said Owaisi adding that Shinde's controversial statement smacked of Congress hypocrisy.
"Why is she calling for a ban on us now? Nobody spoke of a ban when we supported the Congress from 2004 to 2012. It was we who bailed out the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh in 2011 when the main opposition party, the Telugu Desam Party, tabled a no-confidence motion," he added.
On Shinde's demand that speeches of MIM leaders ought to be carefully studied and police action initiated against them, Owaisi dared the Solapur city central MLA to come forward and present any speech by any MIM leader as evidence.
Owaisi said that the MIM's success in the recent Maharashtra Assembly election had led to her outburst.
"Our decision to contest the Maharashtra election and our success in Solapur has thoroughly shaken Shinde. Solapur is not the private property of the Shindes. Any party can contest elections in India anywhere," he said.
The Hyderabad-based party, contesting the Maharashtra election for the first time, staged a major upset, winning two of the 24 seats it contested and clawing into the Congress's minority vote bank in Aurangabad, Solapur, Prabhani, Mumbai and other Muslim dominated districts.
The Hyderabad MP asked Praniti to introspect why Congress lost badly in Maharashtra instead of making reckless statements.
Speaking in the Solapur district Wednesday, Praniti, the daughter of Congress leader Sushil Kumar Shinde, said that MIM had a divisive agenda.
"I am not speaking against any specific community. But if a party talks about dividing the communities, they are speaking against India," she said.
"Not only in Solapur, but they have made inflammatory comments in other places in Maharashtra, in Hyderabad and in Andhra Pradesh," said, Shinde, the MLA from Solapur city-central.
Notably, Shinde won from her constituency with a modest margin of 9,000 votes, while MIM's Taufiq Shaikh won second-highest number of votes.
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