PM should own Congress share for status of Dalits, Muslims ; BJP

New Delhi, Dec 28 (UNI) In the wake of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's comments on the sad status of Dalits and Muslims in the country, the BJP today said the Prime Minister would have rendered justice if he were to apportion and own the Congress share of responsibility in giving a raw deal to these two classes in six decades of Independent India.

BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said the Prime Minister had forgotten that it was always Congress or Congress-propped regimes that administered the country for five of the six decades since independence. It is only fair that he and his party should have owned up the failures of subsequent Congress regimes, Mr Prasad added.

Barring six years of NDA regime and two years of Morarji Desai government, it was always Congress or its supported regimes that was in power at the Centre and in most states, he said and added if Muslims and Dalits got a raw deal, which of the parties should take the blame.

Mr Prasad said the data released in the book ''Population of India in new millennium'', a book authored by noted demographer Mahendra K Premi had shown that the literacy rate among Muslim males in most states was higher than their counterparts from other religion in 2001.

This was in contrast to the data and findings of Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee report which went into the status of Muslim minorities in India. The book had revealed the literacy rate among Muslims in Andhra Pradesh was 76.5 per cent compared to 70.3 per cent among the Hindus. The same trend was seen in most other states including Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

He said such being the case, the Centre should come out clean and provide facts.

About the CBI framing chargesheet against former Samata Party Chief Jaya Jaitley, Mr Prasad said it was unfortunate the investigating agency was used an instrument of oppression and filed selective chargesheets against the opponents of the UPA by the government.

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