'PM's call for fair share for Muslims dangerous'

New Delhi, Nov 3: Slamming Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement that the minorities should get a 'fair share' in central and state government jobs as well in the private sector, the BJP today termed the proposal ''preposterous'' and ''fraught with dangerous consequences'' for unity of the country.

''The corrective effort to provide a fair treatment should be aimed at helping all disadvantaged groups and not any single community for ensuring smooth progress,'' BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar said.

He said the Prime Minister's proposal for reservation on religious basis contravened the Constitution and the facts and figures brought out by Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee should be an 'eye-opener' for the Congress and other ''pseudo-secular'' parties that 'politics of minorityism' was not in the interest of minorities themselves.

''They made BJP a 'scarecrow', fueling the feeling of isolation and separatist mentality among the minorities to keep them away from the mainstream. When modern education is the key for employment and acquisition of skills to remove poverty, these parties thrust their focus on madarsa education, Urdu and Shariat laws and the result was for everyone to see,'' Mr Javadekar said.

In West Bengal, where the Communists were in power for over 30 years, only 4.2 per cent of the 25 per cent Muslims got employment, and this should be an eye opener for all these parties, he said, adding that ''politics of minorityism may have paid dividends for the pseudo-secular parties in keeping themselves in power, but the plight of the Muslims had not improved, and they should ponder about these facts brought out by Justice Sachar Committee.'' It was not just this Committee alone which had brought out the facts, earlier this had been unearthed by Dr Gopal Singh Committee, but these parties chose to give no heed to the findings, Mr Javadekar said.

''The BJP wants the Prime Minister and the CPI-M to tell the nation about their failure to provide justice to Muslims even when they had near unhindered terms in office -- nearly five decades in the country for Congress and three decades for CPI-M in West Bengal....just 6.4 per cent of the 13 per cent Muslims got employment,'' he said.

On the other hand, Mr Javadekar said that the NDA, on its part, provided special package for educational improvement for all disadvantaged groups where there was no discrimination against Muslims. ''If there is reservation on religious grounds, it will divide the country and the country has not forgotten that the Partition of the country took place on the basis of religion,'' he said.

Asked about the status of Muslims in Gujarat, he said their status in both education and employment was the highest in the country, notwithstanding the media's ''diatribes.''

UNI

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