AIMIM MP attends Marathwada liberation day function, parries question on past absence

The day commemorates local peoples struggle for merger with independent India.Jaleel attended a ceremony at Siddharth Garden here where the national flag was hoisted.Asked by reporters why he attended an event to mark liberation day six years after he became MP, Jaleel said, I can justify why I didnt come for the ceremony in the past. But my question is what great feats those who attended this ceremony in the past achieved, he said, without adding anything more.

AIMIM leader and local MP Imtiaz Jaleel on Friday attended a flag-hoisting here on the occasion of Marathwada Liberation Day but evaded a question about why he did not attend such events in the past.

Large parts of the Marathwada region in central Maharashtra were under the Nizam rule prior to 1948. The day commemorates local people's struggle for merger with independent India.

Jaleel attended a ceremony at Siddharth Garden here where the national flag was hoisted.

Asked by reporters why he attended an event to mark liberation day six years after he became MP, Jaleel said, ''I can justify why I didn't come for the ceremony in the past.'' ''But my question is what great feats those who attended this ceremony in the past achieved,'' he said, without adding anything more. A commemorative function was also held in Osmanabad with state minister Shankarrao Gadakh and others in attendance.

Gadakh, who inaugurated an exhibition of books on the liberation struggle as well as a farmers' aid cell in the collectorate, asked people to work unitedly to bring about development.