NEW DELHI: The BJP on Thursday described the Congress’ promise to Muslims in Uttar Pradesh of providing reservations as a “quota cocaine” and asked the minority community to reject such gimmicks.
BJP Vice-President Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi charged the Congress with trying to hijack Muslim votes ahead of the upcoming Assembly elections by “injecting the cocaine of quota”. “The minorities would outrightly reject such lollipop gimmicks,” he claimed.
The BJP insisted that neither the Congress, nor the Samajwadi Party or the ruling BSP have worked for the socio-economic and educational development of minorities while in power. Now these parties are going all out to woo the minorities, particularly Muslims, by resorting to gimmicks, tricks and populist announcements like giving reservations, he said.
Naqvi asserted that participation of Muslims in government jobs had come down by 42 per cent during the last decade in Uttar Pradesh, while it went up in the BJP or the NDA ruled Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh by 31, 38, 34 and 24 per cent respectively during the same period.
The BJP maintained that reports by Justice Sachar and Justice Ranganath Mishra on minorities show how the Centre has miserably failed to work for the economic, social and educational development of the minorities and is using reservation “like opium” to further its “unethical and exploitative brand of politics”. (PTI)