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BJP Muslim leaders woo minorities in Gujarat

In an obvious attempt to prevent the consolidation of the Muslim vote bank in favour of the Congress in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has dispatched two of its senior leaders belonging to the minority community to Gujarat.

Even as the saffron party has deferred the release of its much-hyped “Vision Document to Empower Minorities”, BJP Minority Morcha vice-president Irfan Ahmed and general secretary G Aslam on Monday hit the campaign trail and visited a Muslim-dominated locality. The two, who have also been accompanying L K Advani’s campaign team, will meet families of those affected by the bloody communal riots in 2002 in which more than 1,000 Muslims were killed and hundreds of shopkeepers of the community looted and many women raped.

Leaders of the Gujarat Minority Morcha, who have never held a meeting in the past few months, will accompany Ahmed and Aslam during their door-to-door campaign but there will be no public meeting.

The visiting duo will also go to Ahmedabad’s two sensitive localities —Naroda Patiya and Gulberg Society-which had witnessed worst massacres by Hindu rioters and later also travel to Muslim-dominated Junagadh, Jamnagar, Kutch and Vadodara in Gujarat which 10 per cent Muslim population.

While the Gujarat BJP leadership, including BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, is yet to visit the affected areas and have a dialogue with the victims, the party has focused to increase its minority base in the recent past in Gujarat, beginning with Sadbhavna Mission in 2011 by Modi. The local unit of the Morcha has set a target to add 100,000 new workers but this has not been achieved so far.

“Public support for the BJP from Muslims should be equated with support during elections”, says High Court advocate and social activist Iqbal Khan.

mahesh@khaleejtimes.com