'Suffocated' within BJP, Muslim functionaries resign from party over NRC, Citizenship Act

Shams Ur Rehman Alavi

NewsBits.in

BHOPAL: Muslims in the BJP are feeling 'suffocated and sidelined' within the party and are now resigning over the BJP's stand regarding citizenship act and NRC.

In Maharashtra, BJP workers and leaders resigned after they conveyed their displeasure to PM, home minister and BJP leadership in state but got no response. 

Similarly, in Madhya Pradesh, BJP leader Abdul Hakim Qureshi, who was associated with the party for years, has also announced that he has resigned from primary membership of the party. Qureshi was a close confidante of former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

The party’s Muslim workers said that they had joined the party, feeling that it had a different vision but now they are feeling suffocated, there is unequal treatment in the party with them, and hence, they are leaving it.

The minority morcha office-bearers have said that they were not kept informed about the party’s campaign on citizenship act. Some workers said that if the act was not discriminatory, why they were not being told about its benefits and rather being kept aloof and sidelined.

In fact, the BJP seems to have forgotten its own minority wing in the rally taken out to support the controversial citizenship act. The campaign to show support to CAA has begun and the rally was taken out from Depot Chauraha in Bhopal on Sunday. But the minority wing was sidelined. Besides, Muslim leaders who were with the party for years, are now resigning and leave the BJP.

Several Muslim leaders of the party privately said that they feel the party no longer needs Muslim workers and hence they would leave the party. It has also been decided by workers to go to resign en masse from the BJP. In fact, in other parts of the country too, there are reports of BJP’s minority workers leaving the party.

In Maharashtra, over hundred office-bearers, workers and leaders quit the party over the citizenship act and NRC. This happened in Latur district, where they said that even after writing to PM, Home Minister and State leadership of party, they got no response and have now decided to leave the BJP. A similar situation in MP is also coming up.