By TwoCircles.net News Desk,
New Delhi: The Joint Committee of Muslim Organisations for Empowerment has offered its greetings to the Congress party and best wishes to the UPA “for a successful term in the service of the common man,” and has demanded tabling of Ranganath Mishra Commission report in the Parliament and constitution of a Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Welfare of the Minorities.
JCMOE convenor Syed Shahabudin said: “The JCMOE offers it warm felicitations to the Indian National Congress for its historic success in the General Election 2009 under the leadership of Madam Sonia Gandhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh. The JCMOE wishes them success in implementing the Manifesto of the party and completing the unfinished agenda of the last term.”
Syed Shahabuddin, former Member of Lok Sabha has expressed his regrets over the decline in the number of Muslims in the House. He held secular political parties for this as they did not field enough number of Muslim candidates and fought against each other in Muslim-dominated areas.
“The JCMOE, however, regrets, the poor representation of the Muslim community in the newly elected Parliament and attributes it to the low number of Muslim candidates fielded by the secular parties, the competition among secular parties for Muslim votes and division of Muslim votes at the constituency level on the basis of sects and ‘baradaris’. The JCMOE feels that our democratic and order secular will shine only when Muslims and other religious minorities are fully represented in the political system.”
He has expressed hope that the minorities will be given due representation in the Council of Ministers, particularly in the ministries and departments of special concern to them, like the Human Resource Development, Home Affairs, Law and Judiciary, Information and Broadcasting, Rural and Urban Development, Minority Welfare, Finance and Planning etc.
The JCMOE has demanded the new UPA government to establish a Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Welfare of the Minorities as well as a system of periodical consultation with Muslim organizations of national eminence for mutual benefit.
He also demanded the government to table the Report of Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission in the parliament to facilitate the evolution of a national consensus on its recommendations especially on the question of reservation in higher education, public employment, bank credit flow and social development benefits.
Other demands of the JCMOE include annual discussion in the Parliament on the situation of the Minorities in the light of the annual reports of various official bodies and programs like the PM’s New 15-Point Programme for the Welfare of the Minorities, the National Commission for Minorities, the Central Wakf Council, the Maulana Azad Education Foundation, the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities and the National Minorities Finance and Development Corporation.