Hyderabad: Union Coal Minister G Kishan Reddy on Saturday, June 27, alleged that Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy was making comments aimed at provoking Muslims, disturbing law and order, and disrupting the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state.
He also accused the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) of “threatening” booth-level officers (BLOs) in the old city of Hyderabad against carrying out household surveys and alleged that Congress and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) were supporting the Asaduddin Owaisi-led party.
Speaking to reporters here, he said, “The Congress government and Chief Minister himself are trying to threaten. At a recent meeting of Muslims, (he said) if you don’t take precautions, you will lose your votes… An attempt was made to provoke Muslims. The Chief Minister himself is attempting to disturb law and order, hurt SIR process and to link it with religion.”
Rohingyas and people from Pakistan and Bangladesh possess voter id cards, PDS ration cards and other documents in Hyderabad, but the non-BJP parties have remained silent on the issue, he alleged.
According to him, there are Rohingyas and double votes in many residential colonies in Hyderabad and it is the responsibility of the Election Commission to address such issues.
The SIR process should not be stopped despite some parties making false allegations against the Election Commission.
Though the SIR is carried out by the Telangana government employees, he alleged that the CM, Congress and BRS are “spreading false information” over the exercise as they do not trust the staff.
“In the old city, the AIMIM is trying to threaten BLOs, saying you should not visit houses and take up survey of houses. (AIMIM says) we will give you the filled up forms, you should not remove any votes. They are into this during the last four months. Congress, BRS are fully cooperating in this,” Kishan Reddy said.
Asserting that the SIR would not be conducted as per the wishes of AIMIM, he said if the state government threatened employees at the behest of AIMIM, the BJP would stand by them.
The ruling Congress and BRS try to win over the support of AIMIM and Revanth Reddy had made comments like ‘Congress means Muslims and Muslims mean Congress’ and described himself as ‘Revanth Uddin’, he said.
Referring to comments of Congress leaders that SIR was used to defeat non-BJP parties in West Bengal and Bihar, Kishan Reddy sought to know why such remarks are not made about SIR held in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
He also charged the non-BJP parties with “trying to gain political mileage” by creating unnecessary doubts in the minds of people about Election Commission.
CM Revanth Reddy on June 24 warned of strict action if any ruling Congress leader was found not following the party instructions in implementing the SIR campaign.
Participating in a video conference on SIR (Special Intensive Revision) with party leaders, the chief minister instructed the ministers, MLAs, MPs and constituency in-charges to be extra vigilant in the electoral exercise following reports of deletion of genuine voters’ names from the voters list.
