The Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) minority department on Friday launched a campaign to distribute a 16-point sankalp patra that contains some promises, which target the Samajwadi Party (SP). The Congress proposes to make these promises to the minorities in the 2022 UP assembly election.
The promise to open tanneries closed during the SP regime, a judicial probe into the riots that took place during the tenure of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav as chief minister and action to punish those found guilty by the Mathur Commission (that probed the communal violence in Kanpur in 1992) are some of the major points incorporated in the sankalp patra.
It mentions that the SP-BSP (Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party) government led by the then chief minister and SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav failed to act on the recommendations of the Mathur Commission.
“We are distributing this 16-point sankalp patra drawing the attention of people in front of the main mosques in all the assembly constituencies after Friday prayers. We will make the distribution in front of 8432 mosques on four Fridays (September 24 to October 15) to reach out to nearly 2.5 million people. We will distribute the sankalp patras in front of at least six mosques every Friday across the state,” said UPCC minority department chairman Shahnawaz Alam.
“A committee headed by former Union minister Salman Khurshid has been constituted to work out the Congress manifesto for the 2022 assembly election. We will request the manifesto committee to incorporate some of the points in the party’s election manifesto for 2022 polls,” he said.
{{/usCountry}}“A committee headed by former Union minister Salman Khurshid has been constituted to work out the Congress manifesto for the 2022 assembly election. We will request the manifesto committee to incorporate some of the points in the party’s election manifesto for 2022 polls,” he said.
{{/usCountry}}The other promises that the minority department proposes to fulfill if the Congress is voted to power in 2022 in the state include withdrawal of cases registered during the protests against CAA-NRC (Citizenship Amendment Act-National Register for Citizens), enactment of a law to check mob lynching, Maulana Azad hostels for minorities in every district on the pattern of Ambedkar hostels and compensation to the “innocent” persons against whom the cases under cow protection law have been dismissed by the high court.
The UPCC also brought out a booklet recently targeting the BSP, SP and the BSP alike for taking the state on what it called the path of decline. There are indications that more such sankalp patras may be brought out by the party’s other departments and wings in the coming weeks.
“Muslims have been a traditional vote bank for the Congress. The Muslims vote for a candidate who can defeat the BJP. This is an obvious effort to bring back the traditional voters back to the Congress. The move though has been made close to 2022 elections may work to some extent only,” said professor SK Dwivedi, former head of the department of political science, Lucknow University.