SOURCE :- SIASAT NEWS
Hyderabad: All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) floor leader Akbaruddin Owaisi’s remarks on a student’s Economically Backward Class (EBC) certificate gave his oldest rival, Majlis Bachao Tehreek (MBT) spokesman Amjed Ullah Khan, the opening he needed, calling his speech an RSS script.
While Akbaruddin Owaisi’s questions in the House were not unreasonable, pending pre-matric and post-matric scholarship dues running into thousands of crores are a real and recurring problem. Asking the government for a clear breakdown of applicants, rejections and pending cases is legitimate oversight. His example of a family with three houses, a car, a scooter and a bike allegedly availing a scholarship meant for the poor is also, on the face of it, a fair illustration of why eligibility screening needs to be tightened.
He lands in trouble over how he chose to make the point. By recounting that he personally visited a specific student’s home and found that the student’s certificates were being withheld by his college over unpaid fees, Owaisi presented Khan with a contradiction. An AIMIM leader who claims credit for educating thousands of poor students explaining why one of them cannot get his certificates back. Whether or not the family genuinely misused the EBC certificate, the example shifted attention to a “fake beneficiary” rather than the government’s non-payment, which was the minister’s original issue to address.
Khan responded aggressively. He remarked, asking whether Owaisi’s speech was “scripted from the RSS headquarters in Nagpur”.
Owaisi publicly questioning a Muslim family over alleged misuse of an EBC certificate also put him in a tough spot, as it is politically sensitive, particularly when the wider issue is whether poor students are actually receiving their scholarship money.
Khan then turned the argument back on Owaisi by referring to his wealth, his children’s education in London and family functions in the UK.
He then dug deeper into personal disputes, family history, and even referred to the late Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi and a land dispute, turning it into a political slugfest, leaving behind which is where the matter of scholarships altogether. This reflected the long-running contest between AIMIM and MBT over who speaks for Hyderabad’s Muslims.
SOURCE : SIASAT
