Owaisi alleges biases in recovering money against damages during agitations

AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi has accused BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav and the Centre of being biased against Muslims, over the attempt to recover money for damages to government property during anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests in Uttar Pradesh.

"Ram Madhav, who is connected with the RSS, said that they will take money from the protesters for the damages (done to public property) during the anti-CAA protests. Why are they not taking money from Jats (from Haryana) and Patels of Gujarat," said Owaisi while addressing a public gathering here on Saturday night ahead of the Telangana Municipal polls.

"In Uttar Pradesh, notices were sent when property worth Rs 14.5 lakh was destroyed but no notice was served when property worth Rs 2,000 crore was destroyed by Jats earlier," he said.

"Is this justice? You will not recover money from them (Jats, Patels) because they are non-Muslims. Serving notices like this is against the Constitutional right of equality. Recover money from each and everyone if damages occur but that is not happening," he added.

Explaining his claims, the Lok Sabha MP from Hyderabad said that extensive damage to public property had taken place in Haryana and Gujarat, but no attempt was made to recover the money from the agitators even though the BJP was in power in both the states.

"In Haryana, during the Jat agitations property worth Rs 2,000 crore was damaged. There was a BJP government in the state but no notice was sent to anyone (for the damages). When Ram Rahim was sentenced by the court, his followers damaged property worth Rs 120 crore, they seized only a handful of the property there," said Owaisi.

"In Gujarat, the Patel agitators damaged 600-700 police vans, close to a thousand government offices were damaged, but they did not take a single penny from them," he added.

Violent protests had broken out in parts of the country including Uttar Pradesh against the CAA and the NRC in December last year.

The citizenship law grants citizenship to Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Parsi, Buddhist, and Christian refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, who came to India on or before December 31, 2014.