Uttaranchal: BJP is out to woo Muslims

With Assembly elections in Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh due in 2007, BJP has launched a campaign to woo Muslims away from Congress, Samajwa...

With Assembly elections in Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh due in 2007, BJP has launched a campaign to woo Muslims away from Congress, Samajwadi Party and BSP.

Former Union minister Arif Mohammad Khan, who had resigned from the Congress over the party’s stand in the Shah Bano case, has been given the responsibility of ‘‘educating’’ Muslims by organising minority conventions.

Khan, speaking at the first such convention today, asked Muslims to shun communal politics which he said had harmed the community. He told the minorities not to be misled by the ‘‘propaganda’’ of ‘‘secular’’ parties against BJP.

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‘‘Except Jawaharlal Nehru, all Congress leaders have indulged in communal politics in the name of secularism and did nothing for the economic or social enlistment of the Muslims,’’ Khan said.

He proposed setting up of block-level committees in UP and Uttaranchal to ‘‘analyse’’ the status of education and employment prospects of Muslims and the concessions the community has been given by Congress, SP and BSP governments. ‘‘They have only got assurances and nothing else. Even Mulayam Singh Yadav is indulging in the kind of politics as practised by Muslim League in pre-independence India. There is a need for introspection among Muslims.’’

Tanveer Haider Usmani, national president of BJP Minority Cell, said similar conventions would be held in UP.