NewDelhi/Nagpur: Not new to stoking controversies, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief, Asaduddin Owaisi on Monday questioned the Narendra Modi-led government’s decision to confer on Bharat Ratna to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, alleging that the BJP’s most acceptable face had a role in Babri Masjid demolition.
Vajpayee was conferred on Bharat Ratna on March 27 this year when President Pranab Mukherjee went to the ailing former Prime Minister’s residence.
Owaisi also questioned the logic of conferring Padma Vibhushan to the BJP patriarch LK Advani.
With its electoral curve showing an upward trend in Maharashtra, AIMIM is now focusing on Uttar Pradesh in an apparent move to make inroads into the support base of Samajwadi Party and BSP.
“We are going to contest assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh,” AIMIM chief said couple of days ago.
Elections in Uttar Pradesh are scheduled in early 2017. The Lok Sabha MP told PTI it was “too early” to say whether AIMIM would align with any other party in Uttar Pradesh.
He said his party has not taken any decision on the issue of contesting Assembly polls in Bihar scheduled later this year and in West Bengal next year, both the states with sizeable Muslim voters.
Till BJP’s emergence in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, politics in Uttar Pradesh has been dominated by the SP and the BSP for the past decade.
