Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Sunday sparked a major controversy by saying in a column that Muslims in the country were suffering due to vote bank politics and that revoking their voting rights would solve their problems.
The Sena leader has also called All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leaders, Asaduddin and Akbaruddin Owaisi, a threat to the nation.
“Till Muslims are used as vote-banks, they have no future. This is why Bal Thackeray had demanded that Muslims’ voting rights be taken away. This was right. The day voting rights of Muslims are taken away, the facade of people who claim to be ‘secular’ will be exposed,” Raut said, invoking party founder Bal Thackeray who died in 2012, in a column published in Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna.
In a seeming justification of his earlier remarks, the 53-year-old, a Rajya Sabha member from Maharashtra, later referred to Thackeray again to say, “Balasaheb had said 15 years ago that if the voting rights of Muslims is taken away for a few years, then the lobbying for their votes will stop.”
Meanwhile, slamming the Shiv Sena for its statement, the Congress demanded serious action against it.
“It is unconstitutional, it calls for serious action. Motive is to communalise the whole atmosphere,†Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit told ANI.
Earlier, while hitting out at AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi for demanding reservation for Muslims in Maharashtra, Shiv Sena had said that if the minority leader wants his demands to be met on religious grounds, then he should go to Pakistan and try his antics there.
Terming Owaisi’s speeches “hateful”, the Sena said the Devendra Fadnavis government should file a case against him and start legal proceedings.
“Owaisi is insisting that Muslims should get reservation akin to the Marathas. Such insistence had caused the separation of Pakistan from India. Hatred for Hindus compelled a section of Muslims to take control over Pakistan.
“Hence Owaisi may try and get his demands based on religious grounds fulfilled in Pakistan,” said an edit piece in the Sena mouthpiece, ‘Saamana’.â€
Addressing a public gathering in Nagpur on Saturday night, Owaisi, the 45-year-old Lok Sabha MP from Hyderabad, had demanded reservation for backward Muslims in government jobs and educational institutes in Maharashtra.
Claiming that “injustice” has been done to Muslims in Maharashtra, Owaisi had blamed the more than 50 years of Congress rule at the Centre and the Congress-NCP and Shiv Sena -BJP governments in the state for the prevailing backwardness of minority community members.