BJP leader demands action against ‘Pakistani bahu’ Sania Mirza

NEW DELHI (Web Desk): A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator on Monday demanded the removal of tennis star Sania Mirza as the brand ambassador of India’s Telangana state because she is a “bahu (daughter-in-law) of Pakistan.”

Raja Singh, the lone BJP lawmaker in the South Indian state of Telangana, said in a video message to the state’s chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao that it was time India cut off all its links with Pakistan in every form.

“When the Indian government is making every attempt to isolate Pakistan and cutting off all its relations with the country in every field, it is not appropriate to continue Sania, a Pakistani Bahu, as the state’s brand ambassador,” the BJP leader said in the video message.

His comments came in the wake of a heightened media and nationalist frenzy after the February 14 attack on a convoy of vehicles carrying Indian security personnel on the Jammu Srinagar National Highway by a vehicle-borne suicide bomber at Lethpora in the Pulwama district of India-Ocuupied Jammu and Kashmir. The attack resulted in the death of more than 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel and the attacker.

Sania Mirza married Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik in a traditional Hyderabadi Muslim wedding ceremony at the Taj Krishna Hotel in Indian Hyderabad in the year 2010.

The couple welcomed their first child in October 2018 as Shoaib Malik announced on Twitter that Mirza had delivered a baby boy and named him Izhaan Mirza Malik.