An old video featuring Salman Khurshid, explaining increased representation of Muslims in political governance with the assertion that this would translate into support for the Congress party, resurfaced in the political furor surrounding Khan's call for 'vote jihad'.
The BJP's IT cell chief, Amit Malviya, posted an old video of Salman Khurshid, trying to establish the fact that Maria Khan inherited radicalism and prejudice from her uncle.
Malviya cited Khurshid's speech at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University in May 2016, where Khurshid talked about the Congress party's strategy of mobilizing educated urban Muslims to take back political power. Malviya said this strategy was the turning point in the formation of the UPA 1 and UPA 2 governments.
Moreover, Malviya argued that the Congress manifesto should be seen in the light of its past tradition of compromise with Muslims for political ends.
In the massively circulated four-minute video, Salman Khurshid speaks about the Congress party's efforts to attain reservation for Muslim backward communities, possibly coming at the expense of the other groups such as SC/ST and OBCs. He has also talked about how judicial intervention pulled the brakes on plans for a 4 percent sub-quota for backward Muslims.
In a public meeting, Maria Alam Khan, an SP leader, has asked people to take up arms in what she called 'jihad for votes' to oust the Modi government. She said members of the community supported Mukesh Rajput, BJP candidate from Farrukhabad.
Khan appealed for everybody's unity over the vote. According to her, people should vote in silence and in groups. She opposed Muslim people who were holding public meetings for BJP's Mukesh Rajput, who was contesting against her. She criticized Muslim people for holding public meetings and said they should be punished for that.
She also mentioned that her supposed justice-loving brother Salman Khurshid was fighting for the release of people who were jailed in cases related to Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and she called him a justice banner in such cases.
