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VHP goes hammer and tongs at National Commission on Minorities

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad today dubbed the National Commission on Minorities, which arrived in Ahmedabad yesterday on a three-day visit to probe incidents of alleged atrocities on the minorities in Gujarat, as a ''political commission''.

Announcing its boycott, the VHP said ''not only its intentions and integrity but the very antecedents of its office-bearers are doubtful."

Addressing the media, VHP national joint secretary Dr Praveen Togadia and Gujarat unit general secretary Dilip Trivedi claimed the Commission's visit seemed to be part of the Congress's ''strategy to instigate and excite minorities''.

Why did the Commission not bother to probe the killings of minority Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir, they asked.

The VHP leaders also questioned the ''antecedents'' of the Commission's office-bearers charged them with ''political bias'' and a ''hate-Hindu attitude''.

They alleged that while Commission Chairman James Massey had been trying to divide the Hindu community by provoking dalit sentiments and writing books using the resources of Christian bodies, its member Marzban Patrawala was a former Congress member and now associated with Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party.

Yet another member Yusuf Muchhala was the lawyer for one of the accused in the serial bomb blasts case in Bombay, including the Memon brothers, the VHP officials alleged.

Bhatt said that instead of sending the Commission directly to Gujarat they should have sought official details and information from the state government first.

He said that, when Amarsinh Chaudhary of the Congress was the state's chief minister in 1989, there were 29 major and about 128 minor incidents of communal conflict.

Massey's team will visit Surat tomorrow morning to meet district officers, minority leaders and receive representations from them. It will also hold discussions with senior police and civil officers.

UNI

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