Do we like Asaduddin Owaisi?
Our score: 4 out of 10. Plenty of real work and a fight against doctored smears, but his stated position on same-sex and trans marriage is a real mark for this page.
Owaisi was born in Hyderabad in 1969 and trained as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn in London. He won the Charminar seat in the state assembly in 1994 and 1999, then the Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat in 2004, and has held it since. He took over the AIMIM presidency in 2008 after his father died, and in 2024 he beat the BJP's Madhavi Latha by more than 3.38 lakh votes.
The recent stoushes show his style. In February 2026 he filed a police complaint in Hyderabad over a video first posted on the Assam BJP's account showing Assam's chief minister aiming a rifle at two men identified as Muslims. His complaint alleged it was a deliberate and malicious act, and the video was deleted after wide criticism. In January he said that one day a hijab-wearing woman would be India's prime minister, and BJP MP Anil Bonde called that irresponsible and half-truths.
Now the harm check. After the Supreme Court's 2023 same-sex marriage ruling he welcomed the outcome, saying it was for parliament, not courts, to decide. He said his faith and conscience put “marriage is only between a man and a woman”, and he objected to the bench's view that trans people can marry under the Special Marriage Act, saying it was not correct as far as Islam is concerned. For an LGBTQ+ reader that's a real strike. I found no wider campaign from him against LGBTQ+ people and nothing on climate, so the sources only really cover this one position.
On the job he's an active MP. PRS data for the current Lok Sabha shows 86% attendance, 34 debates (the national average is 21.5) and 127 questions asked. He has also long framed secularism around the Constitution, once saying that for him it means to “believe in the Constitution and follow it”.
He's also been on the receiving end of doctored clips. BOOM found that a video of him supposedly threatening Hindus was an edited cut of a December 2021 Kanpur speech about alleged police atrocities, and he said at the time on X that it had been edited. A Varanasi court also dismissed a 2024 plea seeking an FIR against him and Akhilesh Yadav over Gyanvapi mosque remarks.
On the good side, in 2025 he joined the government's all-party delegation abroad after Operation Sindoor, speaking about terrorism rather than party lines. He has lately been pitching AIMIM as an independent vehicle for Muslim voters in Uttar Pradesh. Where you land on that depends on whether you read it as vote-splitting or as long-overdue representation.