Hyderabad: Congress leaders come to blows during meeting

Hyderabad: Scuffle broke out between the Congress leaders on the issue of women voters of the Old City during a meeting held for preparations for the upcoming GHMC elections at Gandhi Bhavan on Friday.

During the second meeting as part of preparations of the GHMC elections chaired by N Uttam Kumar Reddy, TPCC chief with division, block and city incharges, a brawl broke out when the leaders were discussing ways to control 'bogus votes' and wondering how AIMIM allegedly gained upper hand by adopting 'fraudulent methods' during the past several elections.

The simple discussion took a violent turn when the Nampally incharge (candidate for 2018 Assembly elections), Mohammed Feroz Khan's usage of words enraged the leaders from Charminar and Karwan constituency who strongly objected to the tone being used by Khan to describe the 'women in veil', as intolerable.

Khan who was trying to explain how women were being used in each election allegedly by AIMIM for bogus voting, and came up with an idea of employing 'facial recognition tools'. However, this attracted resentment from senior leaders from Old City including former Corporator Mohammed Ghouse, and Osman Al-Hajri, who voiced objection over the way Feroz Khan chose his words while describing women.

The issue was later reported to the TPCC chief Uttam Kumar Reddy who tried to pacify both sides in the presence of other top leaders. But the things went out of control, when Ghouse and Feroz started scuffling. Finally, Uttam Kumar was able to calm down the leaders and their zealous supporters. Later Feroz Khan tried to clarify that he had great respect for women. "The problem is not with the 'Burqa' but the trend of bogus voting through the help of women in veiled attire. This sort of discrepancies could be curtailed using face recognition technology during elections as it was largely developed to recognise the identity of the individuals."

Interestingly, all the three leaders who engaged in the fight were turncoats and joined Congress in recent years from TDP and MIM and considered to enjoy good support in their localities.