With the prospects of a mid-term general election looming large, parties have begun wooing the minority vote-bank.
DNA Analysis
With the prospects of a mid-term general election looming large, parties have begun wooing the minority vote-bank. And what better fodder than the Wakf Board, implementation of the Sachar panel report by the Congress-led UPA at the Centre and the Srikrishna Commission.
While the Sena and BJP are busy drilling holes in the UPA’s decision to go ahead with the Sachar panel’s recommendations and the alleged grabbing of Wakf Board lands in the state, the Congress is trying to project virtues of the Sachar panel findings, apart from promising action on the Srikrishna Commission report on the 1992-93 communal riots.
On Saturday, senior Sena leader Manohar Joshi voiced his party’s opposition to UPA’s decision. Not to be outdone, state BJP heavy guns, like ex-Union minister Syed Shahanawaz Hussain and MLC Syed Pasha Patel, addressed a seminar where the minority community was apprised of the Congress’s designs in the alleged Wakf land grabbing. Earlier, the BJP had published a booklet in Urdu on the issue.
Former Congress MLC and MPCC spokesman Hussain Dalwai organised a two-day seminar for minorities on the Sachar panel report and the Srikrishna Commission report at Panvel in Raigad district in September first week. The Congress-led DF government has already initiated action on the legal cases lodged in connection with the 1992-93 riots.
But on Saturday, it was BJP MLC Pasha Patel who went a step further in wooing the minority. Though the meet was called to highlight the Wakf Board irregularities by Congressmen, Patel with his rustic rural logic linked the two issues to draw home his contention that it was because of the Congress’s “cheating” and “misleading actions” since the last 60 years was the primary reason for the community’s social and economic backwardness. In fact, the minority community leaders gathered at the seminar admitting that Patel’s arguments were packed with logic.
Referring to the Sachar panel report, Patel said, “At one end the report states that the population of the community has risen to 11 per cent, while at the other it points out that 35 per cent of its people are locked up in jails. Had it not been for the Congress governments putting up obstacles in the community’s progress, its people would not have been languishing in jails now,” said Patel.
While trashing the Sachar panel report, BJP MP Shahanawaz Hussain said the Congress had always played on the insecurities facing the Muslims, never telling them about their strong points. “The Sachar panel report is a mirror for the Congress — a huge boulder strung round the necks of Congressmen — reminding them of the sins they have committed on the community,’’ he said.
Shiv Sena leader in Rajya Sabha, Manohar Joshi argued that his party did not believe in reservations and extending concessions based on religious grounds.
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