Hyderabad, Dec 2: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday attacked All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi and said that if Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) comes to power in Telangana the latter will have to flee from the state.
"If BJP comes to power I assure you Owaisi will have to flee from Telangana, the same way Nizam was forced to flee from Hyderabad," the UP CM said, while addressing a rally in Hyderabad.
Owaisi has been a staunch critic of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, who was once the poster boy of hardline right-wing groups. He had called out Yogi Adityanath over several issues, including the one saying many postures of "surya namaskar" in yoga closely resembled that of "namaz".
Yogi Adityanath's recent statement that the Congress needs just the votes of Muslims, irked Owaisi too. "You keep your Ali, for us Bajrang Bali will be enough," the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister reportedly said. Ali was a successor of the Prophet Muhammad. Owaisi had remarked that the Chief Minister had "crossed all limits".
The BJP - which won only 9 of Telangana's 119 seats in 2014 in is going it alone in the state after feelers sent by its state leaders to Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao for an alliance fell flat.