Naseemuddin Siddiqui. Naseemuddin Siddiqui.

BSP general secretary and party’s Muslim face Naseemuddin Siddiqui on Friday said the Samajwadi Party has been “using” Muslims the way ‘tejpatta’ (spice) is used in the biryani for aroma but is removed as soon as the dish gets ready to be served. Addressing a BSP Bhaichara Sammelan, aimed at wooing the minority community, in Muslim-majority Khadra locality of Lucknow North assembly segment, Siddiqui said the SP had promised to provide Muslims reservation in proportion to their population and release of Muslim youths implicated in terror cases before 2012 assembly elections but has not done anything in last five years.

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“Muslims have been voting for the SP for last 25 years. Our women are very good at cooking. They will know that when biryani is cooked, tejpatta is used to give it aroma and taste. But once it is brought to be served, you remove the tejpatta first because it has served its purpose. Similarly the SP uses Muslims for aroma at the time of elections but once the polls are over, it abandons them,” he claimed. Lucknow North was won by SP’s Abhishek Mishra in 2012.

Siddiqui claimed the Dalits and Muslims have been watching each other get “beaten up” in the name of cow protection or beef, but are not coming together. “If Dalits and Muslims united, they will become a formidable force in politics and no one will dare commit any atrocity on them,” he said.

Claiming that 400 communal riots took place during Akhilesh Yadav government, Siddiqui said the riots “don’t occur, they are orchestrated”. “If riots happened on their own, there would have been riots during five-year rule of BSP. The riots are being triggered by the BJP and SP. You have to be cautious as they may cause more riots before elections,” he said.

Exhorting the Muslims to unite behind the BSP, Siddiqui said India has the largest population of Muslims in the world after Indonesia. “Those people who have smaller populations are getting their work done and we are 30 to 40 crore but we are only whining,” he said.

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