BJP to distribute Urdu translation of PM's 'Mann ki Baat' among UP madrasas to woo Muslims

Uttar Pradesh BJP Minority Morcha President Kunwar Basit Ali has compiled 12 episodes of the programme for the year 2022

The BJP has printed a book containing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'mann ki baat' in Urdu to be distributed among members of the Muslim community to send the message that the saffron party-led government at the Centre and the state does not discriminate based on religion.

Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the saffron party also decided to hold a series of conferences to reach out to the Muslims in the western UP districts, where the community is in sizable numbers.

According to leaders of the BJP's minority wing, around one lakh copies of the book, which contains whatever the PM says during his 'mann ki baat' programmes in 2022, were printed for this reason.

"The copies of the book are being sent to prominent Muslim clerics and intellectuals for their comment," said a BJP minority wing leader while speaking to DH on Thursday.

He said the 114-page book was translated by Dr Tabish Faridi.

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The leader said the book would soon be launched and its copies would be distributed among the members of the minority community. "The idea is to send the message that this government does not discriminate on the basis of religion and that the members of the Muslim community have also benefited from the schemes of the Centre," the leader added.

The move comes close on the heels of the decision by the saffron party to organise 'Sneh Milan-Ek Desh Ek DNA Sammelan' (harmony meet-one country, one DNA) in the western UP districts starting next month. The conferences were aimed at driving home the message that the DNA of all of us was the same and were in line with the BJP's slogan of "Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas", BJP leaders had said.

Earlier, the saffron party, in an apparent bid to reach out to the community, had said that it would organise meetings of "Pasmanda Muslims" (backward and Dalit Muslims) at various cities, which had municipal corporations in the next few days.

Although the BJP had won 65 of the 80 seats with its allies in the 2019 LS polls in UP, it had lost in several Muslim strongholds of Moradabad, Rampur, Bijnore, Sambhal and Saharanpur.

The SP leaders, however, said that the saffron party's outreach to Muslims was nothing but an eyewash and a desperate bid to show that it cared for the community. "Muslims are being persecuted under the BJP regime... their homes are being razed by bulldozers," SP LS member Shafiqur Rehman Burq had said.