Nitish failed to uplift minorities in Bihar: AIMIM

Asaduddin Owaisi charged Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday for not fulfilling his promise of uplifting the state's minorities and demanded a "white paper" on their representation in various government jobs.

Patna: Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM on Saturday charged Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with having failed to fulfil his promise of uplifting the state's minorities, and demanded a "white paper" on their representation in various government jobs.

The party's Bihar unit president Akhtarul Iman also flayed the JD(U) chief for tying up with the BJP after returning to power for his third consecutive term in 2015, when the state's minorities had extended him their whole-hearted support for keeping the saffron party out of power.

"Nitish Kumar loves to make a spectacle of appearing at the historic Gandhi Maidan here on every Eid with a skull cap on his head and a scarf around his neck. We have no problems with his gestures of solidarity, but we cannot help feeling that by wearing the skullcap he intends to deceive Muslims (topi pahnana chahte hain)," Iman said here.

The CM should tell the state's minorities what action his government has taken to ameliorate their condition, he said.

"Their plight has been highlighted again and again, be it in the Rangnath Misra Commission report or the Sachar Committee report. A survey conducted by the Bihar government itself stated that even among peons, the representation of minorities is less than six per cent," Iman alleged.

The All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader said approval was granted for setting up an extension campus of Aligarh Muslim University at Kishanganj district in the Seemanchal region, which has a heavy concentration of minorities, about a decade ago.

"B.Ed courses started their had to be stopped since the extension campus did not have its own building as mandated by the NCTE. Nitish Kumar has been in power for so long. Could he not provide land for the campus?

"But for the indifference of the state government, the Kishanganj campus would have become as vibrant as the AMU centre at Malappuram in Kerala. But, perhaps, Nitish Kumar too wants minorities to remain uneducated and look no further than the menial jobs which they get in far-off lands," Iman said.

Iman had unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha polls this year from Kishanganj on an AIMIM ticket.

"I challenge the Chief Minister to come up with a white paper and place on record what is the percentage of men and women from minorities in government jobs. He won the elections with minorities' support, vowing to defeat the BJP and then ended up joining hands with the same party," he said.

Asked whether the National Register of Citizens (NRC) should be replicated in Bihar, too, as the Seemanchal region allegedly houses a large number of illegal immigrants, he said efforts to introduce it in the state will not succeed.

"There are no illegal immigrants in Seemanchal. It is a political stunt of the BJP and they have resorted to the same in the past, going to the extent of calling elected representatives Bangladeshi refugees. The issue will boomerang on them in Assam and attempts to replicate it in Bihar will fail," the AIMIM leader asserted.