NEW DELHI: Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party is geared up to launch a comprehensive nationwide outreach programme among the influential Sufi saints of the country, making them familiar with the party’s policies and programmes started for the Muslims and other minority communities.
This comes as the first such initiative chalked out by the BJP through its minority morcha, which is reaching out to the minority communities, especially the Muslims, to bring them closer to the party.
Under the new programme, the party’s cadre will engage Sufi saints from several states, including Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
The outreach programme, called ‘Sufi Saints Samvad Conference’, will have the religious leaders preach love and brotherhood among all sects. The Conference will be organised by the minority morcha starting from March this year across the country.
Speaking to this newspaper, Jamal Siddiqui, the national president of BJP minority morcha, said the Modi government has proved that ‘Sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas, sabka prayas’ has never been just a slogan of the BJP, but a dynamic project. “People from the minority communities, including the Muslim community, should realise this. There is a need to tell them about the party’s programmes aimed at their progress,” Jamal Siddiqui said.
Quoting a line of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, Siddiqui said, “The Muslims are the flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood,” Siddiqui said that the conference aims at having a wider dialogue with Sufi saints about how to take the country ahead in a peaceful way. “The need of hour is to bring the Sufi saints into the forefront,” he said.
Besides religious leaders from dargahs such as Ajmer Sharif and Hazrat Nizamuddin and other places, a Christian saint from Delhi has also been included in this programme, Siddiqui said. The BJP leader further said that the BJP’s minority morcha will also facilitate a meeting of the Sufi saints with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the near future.
Boosting ‘sabka saath’