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Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MLA Sangram Jagtap, who has continued to target the Muslim community despite receiving a show-cause notice from the party, was summoned to Mumbai on Tuesday.
NCP spokesperson Sanjay Tatkare said Jagtap attended a party meeting where party leaders spoke to him. After the party meeting ended late on Tuesday, NCP chief and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said, “I have told him whatever needed to be told.. We have sought a written explanation from him, and we are awaiting his reply.”
In his latest remark, Jagtap, the Ahilyanagar MLA, had alleged that “jihadis” were responsible for cases involving the abuse of Hindu women. “In 100 cases of atrocities against Hindu women, all the accused are jihadis. Some people among us are supporting these jihadis. If we study assault cases, you will find that all of them involve Hindu women as victims, and the accused are all jihadis,” he said during a rally organised in Ghargaon village of Sangamner taluka on Monday. The ‘Jankrosh Morcha’ was organised to protest the alleged assault on a tribal woman.
The mobile numbers of women are sought under the guise of giving them bakery products, he further alleged. “This leads to the start of a crime,” he said, even as he demanded that all illegal places of worship should be demolished.
Jagtap has been at the centre of a controversy after asking citizens last week to make Diwali purchases exclusively from shops owned by Hindus. Ajit Pawar slammed his remarks, saying they were “unacceptable” to the party, following which a show-cause notice was issued to Jagtap on Sunday. The same day, however, Jagtap justified his remark, saying that it was the Muslim community that had first appealed to its members to make Eid purchases only from their shops.
Anjum Inamdar, a Pune activist, admitted that Jagtap’s claim on leaflets being distributed urging community members to make Eid purchases from only Muslims was true. “But this incident, I heard, happened four years ago. And it was on WhatsApp. The police had filed a case against the person, and he was arrested. Why is Jagtap digging up an old case against which the police have already taken action?” he asked.
“The Muslim community is now convinced that Ajit Pawar is not a secular leader. If he were, he would have taken action against Jagtap long ago. Jagtap has been repeatedly targeting Muslims and hurting our sentiments. What has Ajit Pawar done so far? He is playing political games in association with the BJP to suit his political convenience,” Inamdar added.
A well-thought-out strategy?
NCP sources said that Jagtap was likely to tone down his rhetoric ahead of Diwali and the party was likely to let the issue die down on its own. “The NCP is unlikely to take action as it has the backing of the BJP…Whatever Jagtap is doing is a well-thought-out plan of the BJP-NCP,” said an NCP leader.
Earlier, asked if the party was planning to take further action against Jagtap, Tatkare had said, “’We are looking into the issue.”
Meanwhile, NCP (SP) leader Supriya Sule said Jagtap should be sacked as he was trying to create bitterness between the two communities. “Jagtap’s utterances are against the Constitution, and he should be removed by the NCP,” said Sule.
The Maharashtra Congress, however, said it was confident that the NCP would not take any action against Jagtap. “They will just make a show of taking action, but in reality will not do anything. This is all part of the BJP-NCP strategy. Jagtap cannot dare to speak even after the party issues a notice. It is clear that he is doing it with full backing,” Congress spokesperson Atul Londhe told The Indian Express.
