The most prominent face of BJP’s campaign in Telangana is Madhavi Latha, a first time candidate fielded in Hyderabad against AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi. As we were waiting for her rally in Hyderabad’s Adarsh Nagar, tea vendors – both from the Muslim and Hindu communities – remarked that they had only heard of her recently through the media. BJP members in the area sheepishly admitted that till a few months ago she was not even a member of the BJP.
She shot to national fame recently when she was seen on camera purportedly shooting an imaginary arrow at a mosque while campaigning in the Muslim-dominated Old City area of Hyderabad. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also gave her a shout-out on social media just before the incident.
Even before her candidacy was announced, for months Madhavi Latha appeared on small-time YouTube channels, dressed in a ‘madi cheera’ (the way Brahmin women drape a saree), with vermilion and sometimes ash smeared prominently on her forehead. She would sermonise about how women should live their lives and how Hindus must safeguard their dharma, while making deeply misogynistic, Islamophobic remarks that almost always went unchallenged.
Madhavi Latha grew up in the Santosh Nagar locality of Yakutpura constituency. She has a Masters degree in political science. Apart from running a couple of non-profits, Madhavi Latha is also the Managing Director of Virinchi Hospitals, founded by her husband Vishwanath. The hospital’s Covid treatment licence was revoked for overcharging patients during the pandemic.
In one interview from about a year ago, when Madhavi Latha was yet to adopt the attire and demeanour that’s now seen as quintessential to her said that Hindu women always dressed in a ‘sexy’ way, like the actors from the Tamil film Ponniyin Selvan. She suggested that Muslim women are required to wear a burqa or other such modest clothing because Muslim men eat beef and therefore cannot control their sexual urges. She has also suggested that minor girls being sexually assaulted is a result of using mobile phones and also the way they dress and behave, asking the classic victim-blaming question: “Whose fault is it if you walk on the street barefoot and a thorn pricks you? Yours or the government’s?”
A TRP raker
Mainstream national media has taken an interest in Madhavi Latha as she is challenging one of the most prominent Muslim politicians in India, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi, in his home turf of Hyderabad. In interviews with national media, Madhavi Latha seems more careful with her words, but still reveals enough to let her politics be known.
For instance, on the show ‘Aap Ki Adalat' on India TV, for which PM Modi appreciated her, Madhavi Latha told journalist Rajat Sharma that Owaisi was contesting the election on issues such as beef bans and the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and asked if his “plan was to establish ‘Osmanistan’”. “He is turning out to be worse than Jinnah,” she said.