By TCN News
Hyderabad: An attempt is being made to unite Muslim votes in Andhra Pradesh to push forward demands of backward Muslim community.
A group of about 30 Muslim intellectuals gathered in Hyderabad on June 4th at the invitation of prominent social worker Khalid Rasool Khan to brain-storm on how to use upcoming state and national elections to further the socio-economic agenda that will benefit the Muslims.
JIH Amir Jalaluddin Umari attended the meet.
The gathering according to the report liked the idea of uniting Muslim votes in support of one political party.
Khalid Rasool Khan informed the gathering that Muslim United Vote Committee (MUV) is a registered NGO that will work on the sole purpose to unite the Muslim vote in all 294 Constituencies of the State and will use the power of that “vote bank” to leverage badly needed facilities and rights for the Muslim community from any one mainstream political party that will be in a position to form the next government. The selection of such a party will be done by this Committee and its 30 Members after it extracts written guarantees and promises from the selected party to give the Muslims its rights and privileges that are guaranteed in the Constitution of India. The Committee will also insist on such a party to also announce the agreed guarantees as part of their Election Manifesto.
Once this is done to its satisfaction, the MUV Committee will announce to all Muslims in the State to not only give each of their votes for the selected party but would also appeal to them to also work only for such party’s candidates during the elections in their respective areas. Mr. Khan is the president of MUV.
Dr. Syed Mazhar Hussain Executive Director of Cova (Confederation of Voluntary Associations) gave statistics that in the State of A.P. there are almost 29 constituencies where Muslims constitute 30 to 80% of the population, plus there are another 30 constituencies where Muslims are 15 to 30%. In these 59 constituencies the Unified Muslim vote can guarantee victory for any candidate who can also garner some more votes from the other groups. In another 40 constituencies, the Muslim unified vote can play a major role in giving victory to candidates who run short of 100 to 5000 votes. The Muslim vote, if cast unitedly, can bring victory to over 100 candidates in the State – and if most of these 100 candidates belong to the selected mainline political party then that party will also be guaranteed to form the Government.
If this happens as planned then such a party will go out of its way to thank and support the Muslim community for its victory and will give Muslims all of their rightful shares of benefits and privileges without any hesitation. Such a party will recognize that this united Muslim vote is a Kingmaker and will not want to lose their support in the next elections by going back on promises made before elections.
Mr Abid Rasool Khan Chairman Minority Commission gave the gathering his blessings and said that his main task is to work for the betterment of Minorities and any effort towards this goal will be welcomed by him. He also gave some advice to the gathering on ways to properly handle this subject in the coming days.
In his presidential address the Maulana Syed Jalaaluddin Umari, Amir of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind assured the gathering that the Jamaat e Islami Hind would have no hesitation in working with any sincere and non-political organisation that would take up this task of working to unite the Muslim vote and use the same to leverage and negotiate important concessions and facilities from the political party that is likely to form the next Government. Maulana promised help of his organization’s grass-root workers for this effort even though just a few days Andhra Pradesh unit of Welfare Party of India was launched in a massive show of strength. WPI is the political party launched by JIH.
Link:
http://www.muslimunitedvote.org/