Christian MPs to study minorities panel report

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MAY 6. A forum of Christian MPs has decided to ``study'' the recent report of the Minorities Commission on the attacks on minorities in different parts of the country, particularly the Uttar Pradesh.

The forum, which is a group of MPs cutting across party lines, intends to take a look at the report which has reportedly given a clean chit to the outfits of Sangh Parivar in the recent attacks on minorities and their institutions in parts of Uttar Pradesh. Mr. P.C. Thomas said the forum was intrigued at the shifting stand of the government on the subject and concerned about the spate of incidents involving the minorities.

``The government says at times that there are no attacks on minorities and some other times has maintained that the attacks are not communal. What is the truth?'', he asked.

A committee of the forum with Mr. Thomas as the convener has been constituted to take a look at the report which figured in the Lok Sabha on Friday.

Mr. P.R. Kyadiah, former Governor of Mizoram, Mr. Patrick Desouza, Mr. Eduardo Falerio and Mr. K. Asungba are the other members of the committee.

The committee in its first sitting on Friday decided to visit the areas, where the attacks took place and interact with all the concerned people.

In another development the all-India meeting of presidents and general secretaries of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) which began this morning expressed serious concern over what was termed as frontal attack on secular fabric of the country.

In his presidential address to the meeting the party president, Mr. G.M. Banatwala, said there was a systematic and persistent strangling of the secular identity of the polity and there were justified apprehensions that India of tomorrow might not be India of today.

He decried what he described as baseless and well- orchestrated propaganda, denouncing masjids and madrassas as centres of terrorist activities. He said it was this vitiated propaganda that formed the background for the U.P. Bill on Religious Places.

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