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The shortcuts to weaken the minority political power

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The shortcuts to weaken the minority political power
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Each day unravels the Sangh Parivar's another plot to ostracise and marginalise the country's largest religious minority by inflaming racial hatred as much as possible. The promise to review the decision to strip Jammu and Kashmir of its statehood, dividing into three Union Territories in August 2019 goes unmet. Meanwhile, the Election Commission unilaterally has redrawn constituencies in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, increasing only one constituency. But Jammu got six seats despite having a low population. It should be noted that the number of voters in Jammu is less than in Kashmir. Going further, many constituencies in Kashmir were converted into reserved seats. Now the same strategy is going to be used in Assam as well; the state has always been a headache for Hindutva forces. According to the 2001 census, Muslims formed 30.9 percent of the state's population. In 2011, it rose to 34.22. In Assam, which has 126 assembly seats and 14 Lok Sabha seats, currently 31 MLAs and two Lok Sabha members are Muslims. None of them made it on a BJP ticket. Three-fourths of the Muslims are considered to be Bengali-speaking people whose votes are crucial in about 35 assembly constituencies. It does so in all the six Lok Sabha constituencies too. Though increasing the number of Assembly and Lok Sabha seats in the state is unlikely, the Election Commission's agenda is to jack up the number of reserved seats where Muslims will not contest. Accordingly, the reserved seats for Scheduled Castes will be increased by eight or nine; seats for scheduled tribes will be increased to16-19. The next move is to merge Hojai, Bajali, Biswanath and Tamulpur districts with four other districts. This will reduce the number of Muslim votes in many constituencies.

According to Congress MLA Debabrata Saikia the move aims at increasing the Hindu majority in many seats. The expulsion of 19 lakh applicants from the National Register of Citizens in 2019 and the popular agitation has not been forgotten. Following the intervention of the court and the subsequent re-examination, some of the applicants who met all conditions made it to the list while a large number of others still remain stateless. During the campaign for West Bengal Assembly elections, the Union Home Minister promised to send back all of them to Bangladesh. Incidentally, the BJP lost the election; Trinamool Congress won a huge majority and Mamata Banerjee became the Chief Minister again. Recently, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma , who is a radical face of BJP, has come up with a new argument against the demarcation of constituencies on the basis of population. Calling the re-delimitation of constituencies on the basis of population as wholly unfair, Sharma asks: Is it right to increase constituencies as a reward to those who have 12 children, ignoring those who accepted the government's two-child policy? Therefore, re-delimitation of constituencies will be done on the basis of 2001 census and not 2011 census. Sharma says that the current practice of re-delimiting constituencies on the basis of population and rewarding those who do not practice birth control will be changed through legislation in the next parliamentary session. That means Hindus adopt family planning while Muslims produce as many children as possible. Thus their population is increasing!

The Chief Minister’s warning suggest that Assam will follow the example of Election Commission re-delimiting constituencies in Kashmir by using army suppressing dissenting voices. However, the opposition is against the BJP's move to redraw Muslim-majority constituencies. Badruddin Ajmal's All India United Democratic Front spokesperson Aminul Islam has raised voice against the Chief Minister's move. But it remains to be seen how effective in the current situation the protest against the strategies to weaken Muslim power will be, as in the case of the citizenship protests earlier. Delhi and UP saw how those protested against the Citizenship Amendment Act were put in jail under the UAPA.

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