Owaisi reaffirms that MIM would not support the government led by the BJP or Shiv Sena in Maharashtra

AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Tuesday said his party was not in favour of the five acres of land to be allocated for building a mosque under the Supreme Court verdict in the Ayodhya issue as the fight was for a legal right and Babri Masjid.

“...I speak for my party, we do not want this ‘khairat’ (donation or charity). Our fight was for a legal right, for a Babri Masjid. Our fight was not to get this piece of land...,” he told reporters here. He was asked about the comments of some Muslim leaders that the five-acre land allotted should be given within the 67 acres acquired by the government. The whole struggle for so many years was not for a piece of land, he said.

“...why did we have this patience so much. We went to the court, if it was a piece of land we could have accepted it somewhere else. But, from the last 50 years, we have been fighting this case in a court of law with all the



patience,” he said.

The RSS raised a bogey that a temple was demolished, but Supreme Court ruled otherwise, he claimed. He reiterated his claim that the country is going on the path of “Hindu Rashtra”. “... how attempts are being made to make Muslims in India as second class citizens. Keep watching. Political disempowerment is happening. Nobody can deny this..bring NRC, citizen amendment bill, what message you are giving. My regret is that all the secular parties, their mouths are shut,” he said. He asked why the Congress, NCP, BSP and others were silent and that the silence needed to be broken.

Owaisi reaffirmed that his party, which has two MLAs in Maharashtra, would not support the government led by the BJP or Shiv Sena. Asked for his party's stance in a scenario of a NCP leader becoming Chief Minister, he said, “let marriage happen first.”