A case has been registered against BJP’s Hyderabad candidate K. Madhavi Latha after a video clip of her checking the voter ID cards of Muslim women during her visit to a polling booth went viral.The case has been registered under sections 171C, 186, 505(1)(c) of IPC and Section 132 of the Representation of the People Act.
Hyderabad Collector in a post on X wrote, “A case is registered in Malakpet Police Station against Smt Madhavi Latha, contesting candidate, BJP under sections 171C, 186, 505(1)(c) of IPC and Section 132 of the Representation of the People Act.”
The video went viral about her reaching the polling booth in her constituency and checked the voter IDs of the Muslim women by removing the burqa for verification. Latha visited the polling booth no 122 at Azampur in the constituency. In the video, she can be seen asking Muslim women inside the booth to remove the Burkha and identify themselves along with checking their voter identity cards.
Speaking about the video, the BJP leader said that she had only requested the women to verify their identity and there was nothing wrong with this.
“I am a candidate. As per law candidate has the right to check the ID cards without the facemasks. I am not a man, I am a woman and with a lot of humbleness, I have only requested them – can I please see and verify with the ID cards? If somebody wants to make a big issue out of it, that means they are scared,” she said.
Earlier in the day, Madhavi Latha had alleged discrepancies in the voter list in her constituency. She said, “The Police personnel seem very dull, they are not active…They are not checking anything. Senior citizen voters are coming here but their names are deleted from the list. A few of them are residents of Goshamahal but their names are in the list of Rangareddy.”
On being asked about a video where BJP candidate Madhavi Latha is seen checking the IDs of voters, Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy says “I have not seen (the video) but BJP is simply trying to polarise Muslim votes to win but all these issues are going to help Asaduddin Owaisi. It is not going to benefit BJP…”
AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi is seeking re-election from the party’s bastion- Hyderabad- and is pitted against BJP’s Madhavi Latha, a political novice, who ran a spirited campaign.
Meanwhile, in Nizamabad also sitting MP and BJP candidate Dharmapuri Arvind went to polling stations and expressed his anger at the presiding officer objecting to the Muslim women voters wearing burqas coming to vote.