After his miserable failure to enter Bihar assembly by making intensive campaign, the Hyderabad-based Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) president and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi now making hectic efforts to enter Uttar Pradesh assembly in the upcoming elections. Though till recently the party was confined mostly to old city of Hyderabad, after winning two MLA seats in Maharashtra about two years ago he has started cultivating his pan national ambitions.

In the absence of commendable Muslim leader at national level, Owaisi believing that by winning few pockets here and there, particularly where Muslim concentration is extensive, he can emerge as a powerful Muslim leader at the national level.

After the year-long preparation, the party has already released its list of 11 candidates for the first and second phase of elections in UP, nominations for which will begin on January 17.The party is expected to release two more lists of candidates for the remaining five phases of the polls. Owaisi has already started his campaign last week and will campaign in the State for four days from January 13 to 16.

To get inroads into several states, he has been propagating the unity of Muslims with Daliths. MIM’s UP unit president Shoukat Ali said the Majlis would raise the issues pertaining to deprived communities such as Dalits, Muslims and backward classes. He deplored that these sections have been treated as mere vote banks and not given their due by the parties which ruled UP.

For the last one year, Asaduddin Owaisi had been campaigning in various towns of UP despite last minute cancellation of permission for his public meetings. As many as 20 meetings were cancelled at the last moment forcing them to approach courts.

He has been harping about the ‘communal politics’ of Samajwadi Party government and the need to combat it. “People have experienced the rule of all political parties but now it is the time for them to give a chance to Majlis,” he says.