A girl wearing hijab will become India's PM one day: Owaisi

A girl wearing hijab will become the prime minister of the country one day, All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi has said amid the controversy over Muslim women's headscarves.

"If a girl decides to wear hijab and asks her parents to do so and when her parents allow her to wear it, who can stop her from wearing it? We will see it, inshaallah. Owaisi is heard saying in a 43-second video of his address in an election rally.

"The girls will wear hijab, will wear niqab and go to colleges and become doctors, collectors, SDMs and businessmen," Owaisi was heard saying in the video, shared on his Twitter handle.

"You all keep in mind, perhaps when I am not alive, a girl wearing a hijab will become the prime minister of this country one day," he added.

The hijab row started in Karnataka in December-end when a few students of a government pre-university college in Udupi, attending classes in headscarves, were asked to leave the campus.

The matter then spread to different parts of the state, with youngsters, backed by right-wing outfits, responding by wearing saffron scarves.

With the protests taking a violent turn at some places earlier this week, the state government on Tuesday declared a three-day holiday for the institutions.

Hyderabad MP Owaisi's party All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen is fighting the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections as part of the Bhagidari Parivartan Morcha, its pre-poll alliance with little-

known Jan Adhikar Party of former state minister Babu Singh Kushwaha and an all-India body of government employees of the backward, Dalits and minority community.