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Minorities Rights Day: BJP leaders say only their party cares for Muslims
For decades, Muslim votes were chewed like gum but Amar, Abdul, Anthony equal partners in Modi-Yogi era, says former Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi
Several Muslim leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came together on the ‘Minorities Rights Day’ in Lucknow on Sunday.
They called upon the minorities to support the BJP, which, they claimed, was the only party that cared for them without using them as a “vote bank.”
Former Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who attended a function organised at the Ganna Sansthan auditorium here, said: “For decades, Muslim votes were chewed like chewing gum and chucked like castaway.”
The BJP is wooing Muslims in a big way after having won three constituencies - the Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha and the Rampur assembly seat - since June. All three seats have a sizeable Muslim presence.
The BJP is now planning to field sizeable number of Muslim candidates in the urban local bodies polls and has lined up a series of ‘pasmanda backward)’ Muslim meets to woo the community.
At the function organised by state’s minorities commission in Lucknow, Naqvi said, “India has become the flagbearer of inclusive empowerment by crushing the curse of communalism as the Modi-Yogi era has ensured ‘Amar, Abdul, Anthony’ become equal partners.”
He further said that today the time has changed, the environment has changed and the mood of the country has changed.
“Those who say that the development of minorities and the development of the country are separate from each other are perpetrating a fraud to keep the minorities away from the mainstream,” he claimed.
Uttar Pradesh minister Danish Azad Ansari, State Minorities Commission Chairman Ashfaq Saifi, BJP UP Minority Morcha president Basit Ali and other dignitaries listed the various schemes of the “double engine” Modi and Yogi governments, which they said, were being delivered to the people.
