Radiance News Service
Hyderabad, Nov. 16
For the first time in the campaign for Telangana Assembly elections, the issue of Babri Masjid demolition was raised.
Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao raised the issue to target the Congress party, which appears to be giving a tough fight to the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).
KCR, as Rao is popularly known, asked who demolished Babri Masjid. Slamming the Congress party for using Muslims as vote bank, he remarked that the party is also doing dramas.
“It is now saying that it will shut nafrat ki dukan. I am asking who demolished Babri Masjid…who got it demolished. If you are secular, you should always be secular and your work should prove this,” the BRS chief said.
KCR was addressing an election rally in Nizamabad Urban constituency, where the Congress party has fielded its senior leader and former minister Mohammed Ali Shabbir as its candidate.
BRS has once again fielded sitting MLA B. Ganesh Guptha in a constituency, where Muslim voters are in good numbers to influence the outcome.
KCR, who is aiming for a third term in power in Telangana, raised the issue of Babri Masjid to slam Congress party but critics say he forgot the fact that it was he and his party who had been eulogising P. V. Narasimha Rao, under whose prime ministership Babri Masjid was demolished.
KCR government had also organised birth centenary celebrations of Narasimha Rao on a grand scale and criticised the Congress party for not giving due respect to the former Prime Minister.
The state government also installed a statue of Narasimha Rao at his samadhi in Hyderabad and his portrait in Telangana Assembly. The BRS also made his daughter Surabi Vani Devi a member of Telangana Legislative Council.
At the Nizamabad public meeting, KCR also claimed that during the last 10 years, Telangana set an example of communal harmony for the entire country. “There was not a single communal riot and curfew was not imposed anywhere. Compare this with the Congress rule in the past when there used to frequent communal riots resulting in imposition of curfew for days together,” he said.
“As long as KCR is alive, Telangana will remain secular,” KCR said.
He also claimed that the BRS government spent Rs.12,000 crore on minority welfare during the last 10 years while Congress had spent only Rs.2,000 crore from 2004 to 2014.
