NEW DELHI, Aug 24 (UNI): The Bharatiya Janata Party today accused the Congress led coalition government at the Centre of still pursuingthe vote bank politics saying that only India had a body like the Minority Commission.
"Most of the countries have the Human Rights Commissions but India in addition has the Minority Commission," BJP Parliamentary Party spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra told newspersons.
Besides three more bodies, Rajinder Sachchar Committee on Minority backwardness, Muslim Minorities Educational Institutions Commission and Ranganath Mishra Commission on legal aids to Minorities, had been set up merely keeping in view the minorities' vote bank, he said.
Malhotra said the BJP was totally against religion-based reservations.
Muslims constituted 12 per cent of the country's total population.
Of the 12 per cent, 9 per cent were covered under the existing law for reservation for the other backward classes.
"The whole community cannot be treated as backward," he said.
The BJP leader said that whenever the government brought in the bills in regard to reservation to the Muslims, the party would oppose it and insist that the same be referred to the Standing Committee.
He said there was no scope for reservation on the basis of religion in India.
The reservation to SC/ST was provided keeping in view their backwardness and the practice of untouchability.
This was not the case with the Muslims, he said, adding that the BJP would like to warn that appeasement to one community on the basis of religion and treating them as vote bank would lead the country to the pre-partition days.
