Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The Telangana Congress has received over 300 suggestions from leading Muslim and Christian socio-religious organisations for its proposed Minorities Declaration, which the party is in the process of releasing after its Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Declaration.
The convenor of the state unit’s Political Affairs Committee (PAC) and chairman of its Minorities Declaration Committee, Mohammed Ali Shabbir, said the document would lay out a “comprehensive vision” for the safety, growth and prosperity of all minorities, including Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains. “All the promises which would be made in the Declaration will be practical and they will be implemented 100%,” he said.
Shabbir, along with senior PCC vice-president and convenor of the Minorities Declaration Committee, Zafar Javeed, have been holding meetings to review the progress on the draft of the document. He said that more than 12 prominent Muslim, Christian and other organisations have submitted their charter of demands to the committee already.
Of the 89 demands from the Muslim community, about 40 are from three leading Shia Muslim organisations, while the Christian community has put forward over 30 main demands. The Committee members have also submitted over 400 suggestions on what the Congress should do for the welfare of minorities if it wins the coming elections.
The demands have been categorised under the following heads: economic empowerment; education; women’s empowerment; religious infrastructure and honorarium; housing; Old City development; protection of Wakf properties; and the promotion of Urdu language, cultural and religious institutions.
The demands by Muslim and Christian groups include economic empowerment through government financial grants and subsidised loans; more quotas in education as well as reimbursement of students’ fees; women’s empowerment with jobs in government; honorarium to pastors and muzzeins; free housing for eligible beneficiaries; etc.
Shabbir claimed that the “overwhelming” response to the Minorities Declaration plan shows that the minorities in Telangana feel betrayed by the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government and want to throw it out in the next Assembly elections.
“The variety of suggestions show that the welfare of minorities, who constitute nearly 14% of the total population in Telangana, remained neglected under the BRS regime and the next Congress government would need to do a lot of work to bring them back to the path of development,” he said.
In the third week of September, the Congress plans to hold a meeting with the representatives of minority organisations in Hyderabad, after the conclusion of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting there. Through these ‘declarations’, the Congress is also looking to counter the welfare moves by the ruling BRS headed by Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao or KCR, which recently extended the financial assistance scheme meant for the Backward Classes (BCs) to the minorities.
In early June, the KCR government launched a new welfare scheme to provide financial assistance to eligible BC beneficiaries. This “Economic Support Scheme with 100% subsidy’’ proposes to provide a one-time aid of Rs 1 lakh to one member of a BC beneficiary family. On July 23, the government extended the same scheme to Muslims and Christians, and invited applications from all eligible beneficiaries.
The TPCC’s Minorities Declaration Committee includes convenors Mohammed Ali Shabbir, Zafar Javeed, Shaik Abdullah Sohail, Uzma Shakir, Faheem Qureshi, B Ezekiel, Syed Azmathullah Hussaini, Deepak John, and Rashed Khan.
Of Telangana’s total 119 Assembly seats, there are at least 35 Assembly constituencies with a sizeable Muslim population.
