Gandhinagar: A Minority civil society organisation, which had planned a protest at the Prime Minister’s inaugural venue in Ahmedabad to highlight the Gujarat Government’s failure in addressing the development needs of the minorities, found all their leaders picked up by the police hours before the function on Thursday.
Gujarat civil society organisation, Minority Coordination Committee (MCC) leaders – Mujahid Nafees, Shakeel Shaikh, Danish Khan, and others, who had planned a protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the VS Hospital – were detained on Thursday afternoon. They had wished to highlight the alleged failure of the Gujarat government to implement “development needs” of minorities who form 11.5% of the state’s population.
An MCC communique said, the Gujarat authorities were “so scared” of the protest against the Prime Minister, whom MCC members had planned to give a memorandum of demands, that the leaders were picked up for detention from their residence at 3 pm, an hour before the protest was planned. Insisting that the PM “cannot suppress our voice”, MCC claimed, “Our demands are all in consonance with international treaties signed by the Government of India.”
The Prime Minister, who arrived in Gujarat on a three day visit on Thursday afternoon, principally related to his flagship programme, Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit 2019 which kicks off on Friday, immediately waded into a string of engagements that will keep him busy until he leaves the state on Saturday.
Unfolding the health initiative, while speaking at the inaugural function of a super speciality hospital built by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, Modi said that the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Institute of Medical Sciences and research carries forward the vision of the first president of the city’s civic body and is therefore aptly named after him. The PM pointed out that it was the endeavor of his government to provide the best health and wellness facilities to 50 crore poor of India free of cost under the Ayushman Bharat scheme of the Centre.
Pointing out that the 10 per cent reservation for the Economically Weaker sections in the general category was a panacea for many of the social disparities plaguing the country, he said that it would help remove distrust between communities over reservations in government jobs and educational institutions.
