Justice Sachar laboured in wrong direction: BJP

New Delhi, Nov 30: Assailing the Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee's report on status of Muslims in the country, the BJP today claimed that it would only serve to divide the nation and disturb social harmony, doing no good to the Muslim minorities.

In her preliminary observations about the report tabled in the Parliament, BJP Parliamentary Party spokesman Sushma Swaraj said the ''voluminous and laborious'' report onlly exemplified an ''effort made in the wrong direction with a pseudo vision full of biases and prejudices.'' ''The status of the community, according to the report, is a sad reflection on the governance of Congress and its allies in the country who ruled in the Centre for over 50 years and most of the states of the country,'' she said pointing that the Communists were ruling for three decades in West Bengal while the RJD was in power for 15 years in Bihar and Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh for the last five years.

Taking exception to the Committee's point about low representation of Muslim in the Armed Forces, Mrs Swaraj said Justice Sachar had glossed over the fact that that the doors were open for any qualified Muslim to join the forces and there was no ban on that. ''However the fact it conveniently forgot was that Muslims in the Indian Army were given an option to migrate to Pakistan during the Partition of the country,'' she said, adding that if the majority of them had walked out of the country, how could one expect parity.

She said one ''dangerous'' recommendation of the Sachar Committee was separate nomination for Muslim members because they could not get elected in normal election process. ''Its observation that a majority of Muslim-dominated constituencies were reserved for Scheduled Castes was tantamount to castigating the electoral process and the institutions like Delimitation Commission,'' she claimed.

Regretting that not one of the seven members in the Commission was a woman, therefore letting 50 per cent of the minority community go unrepresented, she said the contents of the report were published in 14 part serials in some newspapers while the government found it difficult to place it before the Parliament.

Referring to the demand for continued reservation facilities for converted Dalits and Christians, she said ''this very Muslim leadership'' had opposed reservation for the SCs and STs in minority-run institutions on the ground that they should not be burdened with the majority's problems.

''Now they find it convenient to reverse their own arguments,'' she added.

UNI