Muslim quota ammo in Yogi, Rajnath hands to target Congress

MANDYA/BELAGAVI/VIJAYAPURA: Congress’s stock-in-trade may be appeasement but the Constitution doesn’t permit rolling out religion-based reservation for votes, defence minister Rajnath Singh and UP CM Yogi Adityanath said at separate rallies in Karnataka on Wednesday as BJP’s star campaigners kept their focus fixed on the 4% quota for Muslims that the state scrapped recently.
“If there is any party in the history of India that used dharm or mazhab (religion) to win polls, it’s Congress,” Rajnath said in Belagavi. “Congress plays politics with Hindus, Muslims and Christians, which should never be done. We would welcome it if an underprivileged Muslim or a Christian gets reservation benefits, but not through religion-based reservation.”
Adityanath didn’t veer from the script, using his first campaign rally ahead of the May 10 polls to tear into Congress for its allegedly divisive ways. “India was divided on religious lines in 1947. We are not ready for another Partition,” he said in Mandya.
Claiming that UP didn’t witness a single riot in the past six years due to the strong development agenda of the “double-engine government”, Adityanath said Karnataka should aim for the same pace of progress.
Both he and Rajnath urged voters to give BJP a two-thirds majority in the 224-member assembly. The defence minister said in Belagavi that BJP didn’t believe in discrimination on the basis of caste, creed or religion. “We believe in ‘insaaf aur insaaniyat’ (justice and humanity).”
Days before the model code of conduct kicked in, the Basavaraj Bommai government did away with 4% reservation for Muslims under the 2B category of OBCs. The government split that quota equally between the two dominant communities of the state—Vokkaligas in 2C and Lingayats in 2D. Muslims were placed in the economically weaker section. Many Muslim organisations subsequently approached the SC, which directed the state not to implement its decision until it hears the matter on May 9.
In Vijayapura district, Adityanath said India became the biggest democracy in the world because 12th century reformer Basavanna introduced the concept of Parliament, something the BJP government was committed to protecting by following the principle of “kayakave kailasa (work is worship)”.
Just as he did in Mandya, he held Congress responsible for the country being geographically divided.