Under severe flak from various quarters for his clamour for disenfranchisement of Muslims, Shiv Sena spokesperson and MP Sanjay Raut did a volte face on Tuesday and said that he had not rooted for the revocation of Muslims’ voting rights as reported in the media.
Talking to media persons at Aurangabad where he was away campaigning for his party in the local civic body polls, Raut reneged on his earlier stand and said, “We cannot revoke the voting rights of Muslims and it is unconstitutional.. I had written anything like that. The media misinterpreted the contents of my written in Saamana”.
Raut’s volte-face notwithstanding, Raut — in his weekly column published by Sena’s official mouth-piece Saamana on Sunday — had written: “Till such time they are used pawns in vote bank politics, Muslims have no future in the country. That’s why Balasaheb had said years ago that it was necessary to revoke voting rights of Muslim to end vote bank politics”.
Debunking the Muslim vote bank politics indulged by the Congress and other “secular” parties in the past, and All India Majlis-e-Ittihadul-Muslimeen Asaduddin Owaisi in the recently concluded Bandra (east) by-polls, Raut had renewed the Sena’s old demand for revocation of the voting rights Muslims on the premise that they would not prosper as long as their community was used as a vote bank by leaders of the likes of Owaisi brothers. He had said the “secular masks” of all the so-called secular political parties would come off the moment the voting rights of Muslims were revoked.
Raut’s turnabout statement on the Muslims’ disenfranchisement issue should be seen in the fact that he and the Shiv Sena have come under severe criticism from various quarters, including the ruling BJP in the state and at the Centre. So much so, the Opposition parties have been demanding his disqualification as an MP and his arrest for allegedly creating communal disharmony in the society, and suspension of Saamana publication for carrying his objectionable write-up.
Secondly, it is the late realisation that his write-up in Saamana may prove to be costly for Sena in the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) scheduled for April 22 has prompted Raut to go back on his earlier stand. This is given that there are a large number of Muslims in Aurangabad and that this community has not taken kindly to the Sena’s clamour for disenfranchisement of its members.
Meanwhile, State NCP leader Jitendra Awhad on Tuesday lodged complaint the Thane police against party’s president and editor of Saamana Uddhav Thackeray and executive editor Sanjay Raut.
In the complaint, Awhad said, “The statement demanding the withdrawal of Muslims’ voting rights is deliberately and maliciously made and published in with an intention to outrage the religious feelings of Muslims in India”.