Now, Cong's turn to hold minorities' convention

 The Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) seems to have suddenly woken up to its need for securing its minorities vote bank, which has been the focus of the JD(S) too recently.  

The Congress has decided to host a one-day interactive session on August 28 at the Palace Grounds, where party workers and leaders from minority communities from across the State will gather to discuss the strategies for the coming elections. They will also air their grouses, said Congress legislators Roshan Baig and Naseer Ahmed, at a joint press conference here on Thursday.

Baig said the party functionaries will be divided into four groups for Hyderabad Karnataka, Mumbai Karnataka, coastal and old Mysore regions.
They will hold discussions on various issues and submit a report to the senior leaders, who will prioritise the issues and pass a declaration. Following the convention, all the leaders from minority communities will go on a statewide tour as a confidence-building measure, said Baig.

Educating youth

During the convention, the party would also deliberate on the Muslim-Bodo clashes in Assam, and its impact on the Hindu-Muslim relations.

“At the meeting, we will discuss not just about the Sangh Parivar – we will also talk about parivar within our community. If such elements are within the community we will strongly condemn it,” he said.

Such divisive forces have been using the social media to mislead the Muslim youths, he said. “We are perturbed about the mindset of the youth of the community who are being influenced by the information fed to them through the social media.” Baig said that emphasis will be on changing the mindset of the youth who have the tendency of being “aggressive unnecessarily”.