LATUR, JAN 8: After buffering the contentious issues of Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura with new election planks like national health policy, BJP's star campaigner and Prime Ministerial candidate, Atal Bihari Vajpayee today began wooing the Muslims with an appeal to change old mindset and a promise to protect their Constitutional rights.Though the party has been trying unsuccessfully to bring about a change in Muslims attitude since last many years, a perceptible softness towards it within the community in recent months has buoyed it. Some Muslim organisations have even expressed their willingness to work with the party and it is no longer untouchable for them. Addressing a series of meetings in the border villages of Maharashtra and Karnataka, Vajpayee sought to dispel Muslims apprehension towards his party and urged them not to look at the BJP through the eyes of its adversaries who, he said, were trying to misguide them with an eye on their votes. And to drive home his point, the BJP leader pointed out that it was during his tenure as Foreign Minister that passport rules were simplified and lakhs of Muslims could take off to Gulf and earn money. ``Today the number of Indians working in Gulf countries has gone up to 30 lakhs,'' he added. Ridiculing the Congress and United Front propaganda that BJP was a communal party, Vajpayee remarked:``We were Brahmins as long as we supported the VP Singh government and suddenly became untouchable Dalits when we withdrew support.''Talks with Trinamul hit minority blockTalks between the Trinamul Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party on seat sharing in West Bengal seems to have hit turbulent weather with the former's minority cell, chaired by Mohammed Ashfaque, opposing the dialogue. The minority cell of Trinamul Congress in a letter to Mamata Banerjee said the agreement was a ``betrayal of trust which the Muslims reposed in her leadership.'' It said the move would pose a serious threat to the peace and harmony in the state and that the party would get wider support if it ``came forward to fight both communalists and communists''.
