My focus on issues that benefit all, not just Muslims: ex- AMU VC
Talking to HT on phone, professor Mansoor, also the BJP vice president, said: “I might be the only Muslim in the committee but it doesn’t mean that my suggestions would only be for Muslims. Rather, I would want to look at it as an exercise to benefit all the needy across the country, not one community alone.”
Lucknow: Former Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) vice chancellor and BJP MLC professor Tariq Mansoor, the only Muslim in the 27-member BJP manifesto committee, announced on Saturday that he would continue to focus on elementary yet hugely important issues like education and health.
Talking to HT on phone, professor Mansoor, also the BJP vice president, said: “I might be the only Muslim in the committee but it doesn’t mean that my suggestions would only be for Muslims. Rather, I would want to look at it as an exercise to benefit all the needy across the country, not one community alone.”
He added, “Having said that, I can only talk of issues I am conversant with; those of education and health, having been associated with these as AMU vice chancellor and a practicing doctor (surgeon).”
The committee will incorporate suggestions from people online and also via the party’s offline outreach to voters and to facilitate this, party has kept suggestion boxes across the state and encouraged voters to send their suggestions on various issues online as well. The date of the first meeting of the manifesto committee is yet to be announced.
The first AMU VC to be nominated as member of legislative assembly (MLC), professor Mansoor, a ‘pasmanda (backward)’ Muslim, had also served as the principal of Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital, the biggest teaching and tertiary medical care centre in west UP. He was also the head of the department of surgery.
“Issues of education and health apply universally and help the most backwards come up the ladder, be they Muslims or any other caste or community, ” professor Mansoor said. Four members from UP are in the manifesto committee that is headed by Lucknow MP and defence minister Rajnath Singh, deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, Amethi MP and union minister Smriti Irani and professor Mansoor..
