Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath on Saturday held a huge roadshow in Hyderabad as he campaigned for the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the municipal elections in the city on December 1. He again pushed for renaming the city and sharply criticised the Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, ANI reported.
Adityanath told a crowd of supporters that Hyderabad could be renamed like cities in Uttar Pradesh. “Some people were asking me if Hyderabad can be renamed as Bhagyanagar,” he was quoted as saying by the news agency. “I said why not. I told them that we renamed Faizabad as Ayodhya and Allahabad as Prayagraj after BJP came into power in UP. Then why Hyderabad can’t be renamed as Bhagyanagar?”
Making his pitch in a civic poll – where the focus is normally on infrastructure – the Chief Minister also drew from the BJP’s tried-and-tested election playbook, a page of which was earlier read out by Karnataka MP Tejasvi Surya when he called Mr Owaisi an “avatar of Mohammad Ali Jinnah”.
“I wanted to know whether it’s okay to say “Hindustan” or shall I say “Bharat”… We are lawmakers, we should place the Constitution above all,” Mr Iman said.
Though this poll involves electing a mayor, and the pertinent issues are supply of water, power and electricity to the city’s nearly 10 million people, the campaign has swirled around controversial comments on allegations of Rohingya infiltrators and a Hindu-Muslim narrative.
Boosted by its victory in an Assembly bypoll for the Dubbaka seat earlier this month, the BJP has targeted this Hyderabad election as a chance to carve out a space for itself in the southern state.
In the last municipal election, the BJP won just four seats, while the TRS claimed 99 to sweep to a supremely comfortable win.
Voting for the 150 wards will be held on December 1, with results due December 4.
