The Congress and AIMIM are at loggerheads in Telangana.
All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Sunday challenged Congress MP Rahul Gandhi to contest elections from Hyderabad and not Wayanad in the ensuing Lok Sabha elections.
The AIMIM MP was addressing a public gathering in his parliamentary constituency, Hyderabad.
Mr Owaisi said that the Babri Masjid, in Uttar Pradesh's Ayodhya, was demolished under the regime of the grand old party.
"I am challenging your leader (Rahul Gandhi) to contest elections from Hyderabad and not Wayanad. You keep giving big statements, come to the ground and fight against me. People from Congress will say a lot of things, but I am ready...Babri Masjid and Secretariat's mosque were demolished under the Congress regime..." he said.
The Congress and AIMIM are at loggerheads in Telangana as both parties are slugging it out to reach the helm in the upcoming state's Assembly elections, which are scheduled to be held later this year.
Earlier this month, Rahul Gandhi while speaking at Vijayabheri Sabha in Telangana's Tukkuguda, said that the Bharatiya Janata Party, Bharat Rashtra Samithi, and AIMIM are working in unison in Telangana and that his party is fighting against this troika.
"In Telangana, the Congress party is not fighting against BRS but with BRS, BJP and AIMIM combined. They call themselves different parties but they are working together unitedly," Rahul Gandhi had said.
The Wayanad MP had also claimed that there are no CBI-ED cases against Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao or AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi since Prime Minister Narendra Modi considers them his "own people".
All political parties in the fray are leaving no stone unturned to emerge victorious in the Telangana Assembly polls. The ruling BRS has already announced its list of candidates, while the Congress has announced its "six guarantees" which the party says will be fulfilled if they are voted to power.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)