UP Assembly polls: Asaduddin Owaisi to start campaign from Kairana on Friday

Muzaffarnagar: Hyderabad-based All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) will kick-start its UP Assembly poll campaign on Friday from Kairana in neighbouring Shamli district here.

AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi would address an election meeting in support of his party candidate on January 13, party spokesperson Shadab Chouhan said in Shamli on Tuesday evening.

The party has released a list of its 11 candidates, including Masiulla from Kairana constituency, for the first phase of Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.

Meanwhile, Muzaffarnagar district authorities have started security arrangements for the forthcoming assembly polls in six constituencies in the first phase on February 11.

According to SP City Rajesh Kumar Singh, 80 companies of paramilitary forces would be deployed.

Last year, Kairana grabbed attention when BJP MP Hukum Singh released a list of Hindu families which the MP claimed had left their homes and fled because of “threat and extortion by criminal elements belonging to a particular community.” Political parties, especially Congress and Samajwadi Party, had slammed BJP for trying to stoke communal tension in Uttar Pradesh ahead of the state Assembly elections.

Later in September, a probe team of the National Human Rights Commission had found that many families “migrated” due to threats pertaining to “increase in crime” and “deterioration” of law-and-order situation there.