‘Efforts to spread hatred against Muslims’: Owaisi slams Assam chief minister for ‘close-up’ video India News

New Delhi: Majlis-E-Ittehadul muslimeenEmim) Chief Asaduddin Owaisi Fierce attack on Assam chief minister on Sunday Himanta Biswa Sarma A video released by the Bharatiya Janata Party showed Sarma “shooting at close range” two people who identified as minorities.Addressing a rally in Zaheerabad, Telangana, Owaisi accused the Assam chief minister of spreading hatred against the Muslim community, adding that AIMIM would soon lodge a police complaint over the video.“If you think communalism is over, remember that the poison of communalism is here to stay no matter who comes to power. And the remedy, the antidote to the poison of communalism, is for representatives in parliament to succeed. You see, in the country, the chief minister of Assam made a video in which he had a gun in his hand. He fired a bullet. The bullet hit a man with a beard and a hat,” Owaisi said.“Tell me, he is the Assam chief minister of the BJP. He posted a video from the BJP’s social media. The Muslim Congress has strongly condemned the video. God willing, the Muslim Congress will also file a police complaint to register a case against the Assam chief minister. They are trying to spread religious hatred against Muslims,” ​​he added.Earlier, the BJP’s Assam unit posted a video on X in which Sarma allegedly aimed a rifle at two people, one of whom was wearing a toque and the other with a beard. The video was removed after facing backlash.Earlier, Owaisi had slammed Sarma’s controversial remarks on “troubling Miya Muslims”, calling them unconstitutional and divisive.Owaisi mocked the chief minister and said: “I want to give you Rs 2 as a charity” and accused him of reducing constitutional governance to bias and intimidation. In a lengthy response, Owaisi said the Indian constitution guarantees equality and non-discrimination irrespective of religion or community.“The Constitution says that everyone is equal. There should be no discrimination, whether it is the chief minister or anyone else,” he said.Owaisi alleged that Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam were being scapegoated for issues such as immigration and rising prices.“If vegetable prices go up in Assam, Miya Muslims are blamed. If anyone wants to vote, they are told to go to Bangladesh,” he said, adding that such rhetoric amounted to targeting a community for political gain.The AIMIM leader’s remarks came after Sarma issued a statement encouraging action against “Miya Muslims” in Assam.“Create trouble for Miya Muslims in any way. If they get into trouble, they will leave Assam… We are directly against Miya Muslims. We will not hide anything,” Sarma said.The comments sparked a political storm in the election-bound northeastern state, with opposition parties accusing the BJP of exploiting communal polarization to consolidate votes.However, the BJP has long maintained that its focus in Assam is on tackling illegal immigration and protecting indigenous rights. Bengali-speaking Muslims are often labeled as “illegal infiltrators” in political discourse, an issue that remains at the heart of Assam’s electoral politics.