NE NEWS SERVICE
AHMEDABAD, MAR 18
Continuing its policy to hound protesters, the police in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Gujarat early on Wednesday morning descended on the home of minority rights leader Mujahid Nafees in Juhapura locality here, and took him to the nearby police station where he was detained till evening to torpedo his plan to stage a protest demonstration near the building of the legislative assembly in Gandhinagar, 30 km away.
The cops arrived in Asia’s largest Muslim ghetto in a vehicle at 8.30 am just when Nafees, convener of the Minority Coordination Committee (MCC) Gujarat, was about to leave for Gandhinagar to reach the Vidhan Sabha gate at 10.30 am for his six-hour silent protest against inadequate funds earmarked for minorities in this year’s budget presented in the House recently.
In a statement on Tuesday, he had informed the media that since the legislators were scheduled to debate the budget allocations for the social justice and empowerment department on Wednesday, his sit-in with placards near the assembly building was aimed at drawing the attention of Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, his ministers and other lawmakers entering the august House.
On getting wind of Nafees’s plan, policemen had picked him up from his home even on Tuesday night for questioning him about the solo protest and threatened to put him behind bars even as the true-blue social activist argued that he had sought the authorities’ permission for his demonstration and he had every right to register his protest.
Usmangani Sherasia, MCC co-convener, told indiatomorrow.net that MCC had been fighting for a separate Minority Welfare Ministry and a special economic package for minorities in Gujarat. The BJP regime was so scared of anti-government sit-ins and other demonstrations that it sent armed policemen to Nafees’s home to nip his protest in the bud.
In several letters sent to Rupani, Nafees had pointed out that the 2021-22 budget proposed a huge 30 per cent cut—the biggest reduction among all departments–in the funds allocated every year for welfare of minorities who comprise 11.5 per cent of the state’s population: From Rs 101 crore in the last budget, the share has been drastically slashed to a mere Rs 71 crore, a clear indication that the saffron regime had been doing injustice to the socially and economically backward minorities.
Nafees has in the recent past also written to the Chief Minister about significant reduction in budget funds for scholarships and cycles for youths of minorities.
According to Sherasia, the minorities, especially Muslims have been reduced to second-class citizens and remain so even 19 years after the bloody Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002. In the absence of an independent minorities’ welfare department like the one at the Centre, all minority-related activities fall under the social justice and empowerment department of the state government with the result that there is no focused approach to ameliorate the plight of the marginalised communities.
All major states have their own minorities commission but despite countless representations for a dog’s age, the administration in the wealthy state ruled by the saffron party for the past 25 years has also failed to set up a minorities’ panel and provide it with a constitutional set-up by passing a law in the state legislative assembly.
The minorities in Gujarat include 9.7 per cent Muslims, 1 per cent Jains, 0.5 per cent Christians, and Sikhs, Buddhists and others 0.1 per cent each. Surprisingly, the Gujarat Minorities Finance and Development Corporation has been headless with no non-government members since July 29, 2018, and the state’s Haj Committee also is in limbo for the past two years.
With the government’s promise of social justice remaining only on paper, MCC Gujarat had on the World Social Justice Day on February 20 also dashed off a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pointing out that the National Minorities Commission set up by Parliament had no chairman since May 25, 2020 and all its members had also retired what with the National Haj Committee also functioning without a chairman since June 6, 2020.
