KCR wearing fake mask of secularism, his govt targeting minorities: Telangana Congress

Hyderabad: Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) minorities department chairman Shaik Abdullah Sohail on Friday informed that the Congress party would observe a ‘protest week’ in August to highlight the problems being faced by the minorities under the TRS regime.

“Minorities, especially Muslims, have been facing huge discrimination and injustice ever since TRS came to power in June 2014. Although chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has been wearing a fake mask of secularism, his government has been targetting minorities on multiple fronts,” he said in a media statement.

“The TRS government has dismantled almost institutions dealing with the minorities’ welfare by depriving them of funds and powers. It denied jobs and loans to minority youth and forced lakhs of Muslim students to discontinue their education. It even demolished over half-a-dozen mosques. Therefore, we have decided to organise a week-long protest to highlight the plight of minorities in Telangana,” Abdullah Sohail further said.

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Abdullah Sohail said that the Congress party, during the week-long protests, would make representations to the authorities concerned and also organise protests on various issues including 12% Muslim reservation, protection of Wakf properties, jobs and loans for minority youth, implementation of Urdu as a second language and other related issues.

“We will highlight the failure of the TRS government in protecting the Wakf properties. TRS had promised to grant judicial powers to the Wakf Board. Instead of empowering the Wakf Board, it weakened the board while allowing the leaders of the ruling party to illegally encroach upon Wakf lands worth hundreds of crores. Not a single inch of encroached land has been restored. The Wakf Board not only failed to stop the demolition of two mosques in the Secretariat, it even failed to lodge a police complaint when mosques located on Wakf properties like Ek Khana Masjid in Amberpet were demolished by this government itself. We will organise state-wide protection to highlight these failures,” he announced.

The TPCC minorities department chairman said that nearly 15-20 lakh qualified youth belonging to the minority community were jobless. He said that the previous Congress government used to grant loans to minority youth under various self-employment schemes with bank-link subsidies.

“But the TRS government turned the Telangana State Minorities Finance Corporation into a defunct institution by stopping funding for all schemes. It confined itself to receiving the loan applications which are later dumped without giving any reasons.,” he alleged.

Shaikh Abdullah Sohail further said that the Congress party would give representation seeking loans for at least 5 lakh jobless youth belonging to the minority communities. “We are planning to conduct special camps and an online platform to collect loan/job applications from the eligible minority youth. Those applications will be forwarded to the TSMFC and other authorities concerned,” he said.

Abdullah Sohail said that the Congress party would also take up the fight to seek justice for the Urdu language. He alleged that the TRS Govt was not implementing Urdu as the second official language.

“Except for a batch of 60 people, not a single post of Urdu was filled in any department. Further, the activities of Urdu Academy have been limited to the publication of a journal and funding for all other schemes like Urdu Computer classes has been stopped. Minority students are also being denied Fee Reimbursement and Scholarships,” he said.

“We have identified a total of 20 important issues concerning minorities of Telangana. We will take up all those issues in an organised manner. The TRS government has created a hype around minorities’ welfare, especially by highlighting the minorities’ residential schools and Shaadi Mubarak. But in reality, those two schemes too were in extremely bad shape. Not even 10% of minority residential schools have a building of their own while thousands of students are forced to live in inhuman conditions. Similarly, thousands of Shaadi Mubarak applications are pending for more than two years,” he said.

He informed that the detailed plan for ‘protest week’ on minority issues would be finalised after discussing it with TPCC President A Revanth Reddy. He said that AICC minorities department chairman & MP Imran Pratapgarhi was being invited to participate in the programme.