Amit Shah to walk through old Hyderabad today in BJP's answer to the INDIA bloc on SIR

Union Home Minister Amit Shah will lead a padayatra through Hyderabad on Monday afternoon, taking the BJP’s campaign against the opposition’s attack on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls to Telangana a day after the INDIA bloc’s rally in Delhi.

The Telangana BJP has organised the march to counter what it calls a “false narrative by the Congress” on the SIR exercise. Shah will begin by offering prayers at the Bhagya Laxmi temple beside Charminar. The march will then set off from the statue of Babu Jagjivan Ram at Basheerbagh and end at Mozamjahi Market, where he will address the gathering.

Union Coal Minister G Kishan Reddy and Telangana BJP president N Ramchander Rao walked the route on Sunday, checking security and other arrangements. The party expects lawyers, doctors, writers and thinkers to join its workers on the road, and says thousands will take part.

A reply to Ramlila Maidan

Shah is expected to use the Mozamjahi Market address to answer the INDIA bloc’s Ramlila Maidan rally. On Sunday the opposition parties called for the BJP to be removed from power over what they describe as “vote chori”, and claimed the party had formed governments on a stolen mandate.

At that rally, Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi said Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar would one day be removed and sent to jail for “treason”. He added that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah would not be able to escape the law.

Shah gave a first taste of his reply on Sunday evening in Chandigarh, where he opened projects of the city administration worth ₹258 crore. He questioned why the opposition had chosen 1 November, the anniversary of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, for its rally, and recalled Rajiv Gandhi’s line, “When a big tree falls, the earth shakes.” Addressing Rahul Gandhi, he said that if he wants to be Prime Minister he should “keep holding such mock Parliaments. Your turn will never come.” He also pointed out that the Congress has not won a single seat in the last three Delhi Assembly elections.

Part of a wider BJP push

The Hyderabad walk is one of several BJP marches this week. Party president Nitin Nabin, who led a “Loktantra Bachao, Arajakta Hatao” march in Rohtak on Sunday, takes the same campaign to Bhagalpur and Kolkata on Monday. The BJP says its workers are going to villages and households to answer what it calls the opposition’s “lies, deception, conspiracies and anarchy”.

In Telangana, where the Congress runs the state government, the SIR has already drawn protests. Monday’s march puts the BJP’s most senior campaigner on the streets of the old city to make the party’s case.