Sound and fury by BJP but Owaisi final word in Hyderabad citadel, wins with bigger margin

CONSOLIDATING HIS hold on the Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s (AIMIM) Asaduddin Owaisi retained it for the fifth consecutive time Tuesday and even got a bigger margin in comparison to 2019.

Owaisi polled 6.6 lakh votes, whereas the BJP’s K Madhavi Latha, who attracted much attention for her campaign style, polled 3.2 lakh votes. The margin between the two was 3.3 lakh — higher than Owaisi’s 2019 margin of 2.8 lakh votes over the BJP’s Bhagwanth Pawar.

The Hyderabad seat was one of the keenly watched constituencies in Telangana due to the BJP’s aggressive campaign here. Apart from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home minister Amit Shah, senior BJP leaders including Bengaluru South MP Tejashwi Surya, Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma among others had also campaigned in the seat. With resources in her hand, and the backing of the local RSS leadership, the BJP was hoping to put up a challenge through Latha.

Latha had stoked a controversy on the day of polling on May 13, when she entered a polling booth and checked the identity of burkha-clad women. Prior to that, an FIR was registered against her after she allegedly shot an imaginary arrow at a mosque during a Ram Navami procession.

In her campaign, Latha appealed to voters to choose “change”, pointing to the AIMIM’s successive wins from the seat for the last four decades. Owaisi, on the other hand, appealed to voters to safeguard the “peace and tranquillity of Hyderabad by preventing a BJP victory in Hyderabad”.

The AIMIM has been winning the seat since 1984, when Owaisi’s father Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi became an MP from here for the first time, going on to repeat the feat five more times. In 2004, Owaisi took over.

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