All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) President and Hyderabad Member of Parliament (MP) Asaduddin Owaisi, on Sunday, responded to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that he had made on Saturday about the minorities in the country.

PM Modi had accused the opposition parties of using minorities for electoral gains, calling for his party the BJP and NDA allies to remove the sense of fear among them. Everybody needs to be taken along for the country’s prosperity, the PM had said.

“Unfortunately, minorities of this country have been kept in fear, used in elections. We have to end this cycle,” PM Modi had said, calling for winning the trust and confidence of minorities.

However, Asaduddin Owaisi termed PM Modi’s observations as “hypocrisy and contradiction which the Prime Minister and his party are practicing from the last 5 years”. He also questioned the PM over the number of Muslim MPs got elected on BJP ticket, reports ANI.

“If Muslims seriously live in fear, can the PM tell us, out of the 300 odd MPs, how many Muslim MPs he has in his party who got elected from the Lok Sabha? This is the hypocrisy and contradiction which the PM and his party are practicing from last 5 years,” said Owaisi.

He also raised the issue of the mob lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh in 2015. Mohammad Akhlaq’s alleged killers are out on bail and were seen in the front row at an election rally of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Bisada village in April. He also recalled how Union Minister Jayant Sinha, in July 2018, had felicitated eight men convicted for killing Alimuddin Ansari in Jharkhand. Alimuddin Ansari, a meat trader in Jharkhand, was dragged out of his car and beaten to death by a mob that suspected him of carrying beef.

“If the PM agrees that the minorities live in fear, he should know that people who killed Akhlaq were sitting on front bench in electoral public meeting. If the PM feels Muslims live in fear, will he stop these mob-lynching gangs, who are killing, beating Muslims, taking our videos and demeaning us in name of cow?

“We can either be appeased or cheated. Since you say it’s the latter, I ask the BJP to stop saying the former. You’re opposing minority character of Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), you quietly oversaw minority lynchings, ignored the victims of Mecca Masjid and Ajmer blasts.

“The Opposition has been harping about EVM rigging. What has happened in reality is the rigging of the Hindu mind, which they failed to notice and counter,” said Owaisi.