Al Haqeeqa
Ahmedabad: The poll-bound Gujarat is seeing BJP and Congress fighting to win the assembly elections with Congress making its efforts in combining castes – Patel, Dalit, tribal and OBC, which in all cases, is highlighting the Muslim community not being a part of any of these election strategies indicating the move as a caste-based rather than religious polarization.
Speaking on its intentional omission, Muslim Congress leaders said that this is the party’s strategy to avoid being projected as pro-Muslim, and fail any efforts made by the BJP party to exploit Hindus using the agenda of Pro Muslim party.
The Congress party has agreed to demands made by the Patidar leader Hardik Patel, OBC leader Alpesh Thakor and Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani along with tribal leader Chhotu Vasava.
On the other hand, Congress has reportedly told its Muslim party leaders that the election manifesto the party is campaigning cannot include demands specific to Muslims.
Congress leader Badruddin Sheikh speaking a meeting attended by other Muslim party leaders said, “The first priority is to win the elections and bring the party back to power in Gujarat, irrespective of whether Muslims are seen with the Congress or they remain behind the curtain. It makes no difference,” adding that “other things can be taken care of later”.
For the past few weeks Rahul Gandhi has reportedly visited a series of temples in the state in the last two months and stayed away from campaigning in the Muslim dominated areas while BJP’s member and Chief Minister Vijay Rupani opted to take his rally through Muslim-dominated Jamalpur-Khadia in Ahmedabad while other Minority Morcha- leaders have reportedly campaigned in Surat in Muslim dominated areas.
However, as it is said Bollywood is a show business so is Politics since BJP has only campaigned among Muslims but did not issue a ticket to any Muslim.
On the other hand, Congress has bagged six tickets for Muslim candidates.
Social and political activists Abdul Hafeez Lakhani and Zubair Gopalani, explains BJP strategies which project Congress party as pro-Muslim, state this Congress Strategy indeed will fail their efforts and neutralize BJP’s effort to polarize votes as it does to win the elections.
Further explaining Congresses efforts to win elections by making it caste-based, Lakhani said, “But the caste agitations overshadowed everything else and the BJP strategy did not succeed.”
They both were referred to the ruling party’s desperate efforts in order to fail congress by linking an alleged IS operative with Congress MP Ahmed Patel who, the government claimed, used to run hospital that had once employed the alleged operative who is now arrested.
