TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: It was Mormugao Municipal Council deputy chairperson Saifullah Khan’s day in the sun at the Minority convention organized by the Goa Pradesh Congress Committee Minority Cell which saw him attempting to project himself as a state-wide leader and announced that he demanded a 10% reservation for minorities in government jobs and that he would go on a hunger strike if the government does not appoint a minority commission within the next three months, a body that was announced by the chief minister, but yet to be implemented.
The event organized at Azad maidan but attended mostly by Muslims who were restless through most of the meeting owing to its delayed start by nearly two hours, gathered as early as 4pm even though it started only after 6 pm.
Arif Naseem Khan chooses to hit out at BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi charging him in the snoopgate scandal where he used official government machinery to spy on a girl who was allegedly his love interest. He also took him to task for falsely claiming that his state was the most progressive in India when it was a lowly 11th in the overall nation’s index.
“We cannot have such a person as the prime minister of India,” he thundered.
Those present included Khurshid Ahmed Saiyed, the new chairman of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress community minority department, and Mohammed Arif (Naseem) Khan ministers for Textiles, Minorities Development and AUKAF in the Government of Maharashtra.
Local leaders including Francisco Sardinha, Subhash Shirodkar and Pratapsing Rane also made their presence felt even as the absence of Alexio Reginaldo Lourenço was conspicuous.
Interestingly both Pratapsing Rane and Subhash Shirodkar chose to speak in Hindi interspersing their speeches with Konkani in a bid to get their message across to the predominantly Muslim crowd.
While the theme was minority upliftment, Sardinha choose to attack the Gujarat government over the Gujarat riots, Rane and Shirodkar took on the government on the local issues such as the stoppage of mining and the like.
