Is the aged Congress bidding goodbye to the Minorities?

Vartha Bharati | 04-04-2019 | 14:49:00 IST

"We don't give tickets to Muslims" said K.S. Eeshwarappa, a veteran BJP leader of Karnataka recently. That blunt statement was discussed in a few circles but did not surprise anybody as people were accustomed to more uncharitable remarks from this leader and others in his Party. Muslims of Karnataka were however shocked when their own favorite Congress party conveyed them the same message without using so many words.

The party has asked the Community in Karnataka to be content with a mere single seat, while the Community wasexpecting at least 4 of its members to be fielded as Congress candidates in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections 2019. As the contributions of the Community and its long standing loyalty to the Congress party is well acknowledged, it was natural for the Muslim Community to look forward to some reciprocation and rewards from the Party. Its demand forfielding its members as Congress Candidates in at least 4 Lok Sabha constituencies was justified considering both the demography and the history of those constituencies. With some persuasion, the Community would have accepted 3 seats. But no serious negotiation was held in this regard with the leaders of the Community. In fact the Community lostits innocent hope of getting 4 seats, only when the Party announced the names of the candidates for the first phase of polling in the state and only one Muslim candidate found a place in that list. It was really a frustrating experience for the Community. Now inevitably, they were preparing themselves to be content with mere 2 seats. They had no doubt that a Muslim candidate will be fielded from Dharwad. But alas, the party refused to show even a minimum level of sensitivity towards the Community and totally disappointed them by depriving them of the Dharwad seat too. The message was quite loud and clear. The Congress party indirectly told them almost the same thing that Eeshwarappa had stated directly - of course, with the narrow margin of mere one seat.

Then came the most awaited Election Manifesto 2019, with the most unforeseen pack of shocks. The new Manifesto in fact delivered the final blow to all the bond that the Community had with the age old Party. Leaders of the Community who in the past used to complain that their trusted Party has consistently failed to deliver on its promises were now shocked to see the Party refusing even to make the basic promises. Leaders of the various sects and organisations of the Community had met the Central leaders of the Party long before this Manifesto was launched and had complained to them that the Party Manifesto of 2014 was incomplete and had failed to state any significant commitment towards the Community. They had insisted that the new Manifesto must expressly promise that recommendations of the Justice Sachar Committe, Justice Ranganath Mishra Committee, Prof. Amitabh Kundu Committee, Partly the recommendations of the Sudhir Commission of Telangana will be duly implemented and must outlay the time plan for the implementation of these recommendations. Those who had ignored the fact that the Party had inducted only one member from the Muslim Community in the 19 member Manifesto Committee, are now left with no doubt at all that the Congress Party is swiftly moving towards the suicidal policy of Zero representation to Muslim Community. It is obvious now that instead of fighting the Communalism of BJP the Congress Party has resorted to outwit BJP by being more Communal.

The Congress Party has always been notorious for taking Muslim votes absolutely for granted and also for practically being the B Team of BJP in terms of its attitude towards the Minorities. To the utter disappointment of those who hoped for any positive change in the attitude of the Party under the new leadership, things have changed only for the worse. If the latest Manifesto is any indication, the Party has for the first time, decided to stop even pretending to have any compassion towards the Religious Minorities in the Country. In a radical departure from its own tradition, the manifesto does not offer any independent slot to discuss the issues related to the Religious Minorities. Rather, it has clubbed them with the Linguistic Minorities and thereby manifested the latest unwritten policy of the party that is close to refuse recognition even to the existence of the Religious Minorities as a distinct entity.

Those who are under an illusion that the Congress Party might some day grow up to serve as a formidable Secular force in the country will have to embark on a search operation through the recently released electoral Manifesto of the Party even to be able to see any mention of the Religious Minorities. In fact there is no separate section for the religious minorities in the Manifesto while there are such section for almost all other important segments of the society. The promises and the commitments of the party for almost all important segments of the society have been laid out in the document in the form of 53 banners under 9 chapters. Religious minorities find a place only in a remote corner of the Manifesto, clubbed with the Linguistic Minorities (under the 39th banner, titled 'Religious And Linguistic Minorities' in Page 22). There are in total, 11 points under this banner and at least 6 of them are exclusively about the Linguistic Minorities, leaving the Religious Minorities with only 5 points in the new Manifesto. Except for a commitment to provide security against hate crimes nothing significant is found in this section.

Thus the Party from its side has completed the process of saying a loud Goodbye to the religious Minorities.

Of course there is a possibility, a tricky one, that can not be ruled out. Is the Congress Party so adversely influenced by the 'appeasement' propaganda that it wants to go out of the way to disprove the charge by teaching lessons to the Minorities? Or is the Party doing all this to provoke the Minorities to protest against the congress and show that as evidence to prove that Congress is on the course of agonizing the minorities rather than appeasing them. In any case a loud and effective protest against this hypocrisy of the Congress Party is urgently called for.

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NDA sweeps bypolls to four assembly segments in Bihar

23-11-2024 ¦ 23-11-2024 IST

BJP supporters celebrate their victory in Bihar assembly by-polls, in Patna (PTI)

Patna (PTI): The ruling NDA in Bihar on Saturday swept the bypolls to four assembly segments, retaining Imamganj and wresting from the INDIA bloc Tarari, Ramgarh and Belaganj, receiving a boost ahead of the assembly elections due next year.

Candidates of the Jan Suraaj, floated recently by former political strategist Prashant Kishor with much fanfare, lost deposits in all but one seat, in a clear indication that the fledgling party, despite claims of taking the political landscape in the state by storm, needs to cover much ground.

The biggest setback for the INDIA bloc, helmed by the RJD, came in Belaganj, a seat the party had been winning since its inception in the 1990s, but this time lost to the JD(U) headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the arch-rival of its founding president Lalu Prasad.

The JD(U) candidate Manorama Devi, a former MLC, defeated by a margin of more than 21,000 votes RJD’s Vishwanath Kumar Singh who made his debut from a seat that fell vacant upon election to Lok Sabha of his father Surendra Prasad Yadav, a multiple term MLA.

The margin of victory was greater than the 17,285 votes polled by Mohd Amjad of Jan Suraaj, whom the RJD may have liked to blame for its defeat by causing a split in Muslim votes.

JD(U) national spokesman Rajiv Ranjan Prasad said, "The people of Bihar deserve kudos for rejecting the negativity of the opposition and reposing their trust in Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Under his leadership, the NDA will win more than 200 seats of the 243-strong assembly in 2025."

The RJD also suffered an embarrassing defeat in Ramgarh, where Prashant Kishor’s prediction of the party “finishing third or fourth” came true. The forecast had caused Sudhakar Singh, son of state RJD president Jagadanand Singh, the MP from Buxar who had won the assembly seat in 2020, to threaten that Jan Suraaj cadres in the constituency will be “beaten up with sticks”.

Singh’s younger brother Ajit finished a distant third after BJP winner Ashok Kumar Singh, a former MLA, and Satish Kumar Singh Yadav who fought on a ticket of the BSP, which has little foothold in Bihar.

Jan Suraaj, though, was hardly a factor in Ramgarh, where its candidate Sushil Kumar Singh polled less than four per cent votes.

The BJP also pulled off a stunning victory in Tarari, which falls under the Arrah Lok Sabha seat, currently represented by CPI(ML)’s Sudama Prasad, who had won the assembly segment for two consecutive terms.

CPI(ML) candidate Raju Yadav lost, by a margin of a little over 10,000 votes, to BJP debutant Vishal Prashant, better known as the son of local strongman Sunil Pandey, who was formerly with the JD(U) and had joined the saffron party a few months ago.

Jan Suraaj had initially announced that it was fielding a former Vice Chief of the Army in Tarari but later disclosed that he could not contest because of technical reasons. Its candidate Kiran Singh got less than four per cent votes.

The most respectable performance from Jan Suraaj came in the reserved Imamganj seat where its candidate Jitendra Paswan stood third, polling well over 20 per cent votes.

The seat, however, went to Deepa Kumari, daughter-in-law of Union minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, who defeated RJD’s Raushan Kumar by a slender margin of less than 6,000 votes.

Manjhi, who heads the Hindustani Awam Morcha, vacated Imamganj earlier this year upon getting elected to Lok Sabha from Gaya.

With the exception of Ashok Singh in Ramgarh, the winners in all the seats shall be making their debut in the state assembly.