Minority voters deleted because BJP afraid: Congress

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: State Congress repeated its claim that minority voters were being targeted disproportionately for deletion. The party has made similar claims in the past about voters from other marginalised groups such as Dalits and Backward Castes (BCs) facing unfair deletions.

The comments were made by Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) working president Saleem Ahmed in the backdrop of a meeting held by the community’s Karnataka leaders from within the party in Bengaluru in relation to the assembly elections due in May next year.

Apart from Saleem, among the participants were former union minister Rahman Khan, former state health minister UT Khader, Rajya Sabha MP Naseer Ahmed, MLAs Zameer Ahmed and Tanveer Sait, among others. Ahmed said that minority issues were discussed in the meeting. “A meeting concerning minorities was held today, and 55 leaders participated in it.

Former ministers, heads of minority wings, and ex-MPs sat down and discussed organisational work within the party in the coming days. In today’s meeting, we discussed the deletion of minority voters. The state government is conspiring to delete voters.

We discussed how to apply corrective measures in the coming days,” Saleem said. “BJP is doing this out of fear of losing,” he added. He said that there would be a meeting concerning all five zones of Bengaluru, adding that a joint convention of minorities and BCs would also take place in January.

“More than 100 ticket applications have been received from minority hopefuls. The application will be reviewed by a committee, and a revised list will be forwarded to the KPCC. We have requested that more tickets be given (to minority candidates),” Ahmed said.