‘For Opposition, minorities mean only…’: Kiren Rijiju reacts to TMC MP’s critique as Smriti Irani takes charge as Minority Affairs minister

For a “pseudo-secular party” like TMC, ‘minorities’ only mean Muslims, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said on Tuesday as he hit out at Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP Jawhar Sircar’s criticism of PM Narendra Modi government’s decision to “give charge of Muslims, Christians” to “hardcore Hindu” Smriti Irani.

On July 6, the TMC Rajya Sabha MP, while questioning the ruling BJP party’s decision to hand additional charge of the Minority Affairs ministry to Irani, tweeted, “Hardcore Hindu, married to a Parsi given charge of Muslims, Christians. Is this BJP’s brand of secularism?”

Reacting to Sircar’s observations, Rijiju took to Twitter and wrote, “Muslims and Christians? I hope one can free mind from the shackles of pseudo-secularism and appeasement politics. Parsis have been notified as minority communities under Section 2 (c) of National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992.”

Rijiju further said Opposition only sees Muslims, while ignoring others, as the ‘minorities’, and accused the parties of practising vote-bank and appeasement politics. “For Congress Party, TMC, Communist and pseudo-secular parties, minorities in India means only Muslims. Because Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, Sikhs are not large vote banks. They have been using Muslims and to some extend Christians, for electoral purpose only (sic),” said Rijiju.

Union Woman and Child Development minister Irani was given the additional charge of the Minority Affairs ministry after Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi resigned from PM Modi’s cabinet. Naqvi, the lone Muslim face in the Union cabinet, was the Minority Affairs minister before his tenure in the Rajya Sabha ended last week.

Last month, several BJP leaders like Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman were nominated for the Rajya Sabha polls, so that they could continue as Union ministers. However, Naqvi’s name was not proposed. Contrary to many reports, Naqvi wasn’t fielded in the recently-held Lok Sabha bypolls from UP’s Rampur either. Now, media reports suggest there are rumours that Naqvi might be the frontrunner from NDA for the upcoming Vice-Presidential elections, though there is no official indication on his candidature from the BJP yet.