CPM to woo minority voters

As the Congress party, armed with Sachar panel report, sets out to woo the minority community ahead of the crucial Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, its ally CPI(M) is keenly waiting in the wings. Come January and the Left party will enter the fray with its own report on Muslims.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh whose pronouncements about the Muslim minority's "first claim on resources" has raised a political storm will then have a difficult choice to make "" whether to implement Sachar panel's suggestions or those of the CPI(M) Committee on Muslims, which will submit its report to the party's Central Committee early next month.

According to Left sources, the committee's suggestions and recommendations will be discussed within the party and then put forward to the government for "consideration". If need be, the party will launch a "mass campaign" to mobilise Muslims in favour of the party's programme.

The CPI(M) has already urged the UPA regime to create a Sub-Plan for Muslims in the Eleventh Five-Year Plan.

According to CPI(M) MP Mohammad Salim, who is also the convenor of the Committee on Muslims, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has already decided to implement it at the state level.

Salim's sharp-though-veiled criticism of the Congress also sets the tone for the Left's campaign to mobilise the minority community.

"Successive governments have done only tokenism to Muslims. What can you expect from Sachar committee report? We wanted to discuss it in Parliament to know who stands where. But the government is not interested in a discussion. Gopal Singh committee had also come out with a comprehensive report; it submitted the report to the government in 1984, which was finally tabled in Parliament in 1990. Nobody has heard of it since," the CPI(M) MP told Business Standard.

He also questioned the government's sincerity about the 15-point programme for Muslims saying that it was mooted by late Indira Gandhi and the UPA regime had just "painted it fresh."

The CPI(M) committee is unlikely to favour reservation for Muslims "mainly because it will not have the legal backing." Its priority will be on how to target the resources at the community.