attack on MIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi: The old rivalry between MIM and MBT

By Syed Akbar
Hyderabad, April 30: The murderous assault on MIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi is seen as an attempt to check the party's growing dominance in the old city politics. It also opens the old political wounds of the MIM-MBT rivalry that dates back to mid 1990s.
The MIM has not only increased its representation in the State Assembly from five to seven but also emerged as the champion of social causes like fighting against the growing menace of call money and land mafia.
The Majlis, under the leadership of young Owaisis, had rejected the dominance of unscrupulous pahelwans or free-style wrestlers, who were troubling people through land grab, lending money on high interest rates, and
collecting "mamools" from commoners building their houses. The pahelwans, who once called the shots, had been cut to size by denying them political support. This has angered some of the pahelwans, forcing them to
shift their political loyalty to rival MBT. Akbaruddin had openly fought against illegal encroachments on government lands and distributed them among the poor.
The party in a way took up reformation of the pahelwans telling them point blank that what matters in electoral politics is "mass power" and not "muscle power". Growing literacy levels among old city residents and increase in political awareness are said to have forced the MIM to dump anti-social pahelwans.
Mohammad Bin Omer Al-Yafai, who allegedly masterminded the Saturday's attack, is a pahelwan, who once supported the MIM. He and other pahelwans in his family had shifted base to the MBT in the last Assembly elections. The pahelwans supporting Al-Yafai have been running a bitter feud with the MIM leadership, particularly Akbaruddin Owaisi as he had vacated their encroachments.
The presence of MBT corporator Amjadullah Khan and a large number of party supporters at Yashoda hospital, where the injured Al-Yafai family members were undergoing treatment, gave credence to the argument that the attack was an attempt to checkmate the MIM from further expanding in the old city.
Call money rackets are run by unscrupulous pahelwans in the lanes and bylanes of old city. They lend money to petty vendors in the morning and charge between 10 and 20 per cent interest by the night. Those who could not pay are pulled out of their houses and beaten in full public view. Call money menace has grown to such high proportions that the Muslim clergy has to intervene declaring it as illegal. The MIM took up the cause of call money victims in its new avatar as socio-political reformer of the local Muslim society, thereby winning over the electorate.