PUNE, 16 June 2007 — Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) L.K. Advani expressed concern over the backwardness of Muslim women in the field of education and urged the Muslim community to take the initiative to educate their women.
Speaking at a function on Thursday evening in Pune, Advani said that for various social and historical reasons, Muslim women were lagging behind in education, which has stifled the progress of the community as a whole and said that the Muslim community and others should help ameliorate the situation.
“The initiative for Muslim women’s education has to come from within the community, although society at large has a crucial role to play,” Advani said
“I accept the fact that the spread of education among the Muslim community is less. The future of Indian Muslims lies in the spread of education,” he said
The BJP leader blasted the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) on the new president’s election and ruled out any possibility of an all-party consensus for the presidential election.
An all-party consensus cannot be met since there are differences in ruling alliance itself, he said.
However, Advani said that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was unable to announce its candidate for the post. “The NDA is yet to conduct a meeting to finalize its candidate for the post of president,” he said and added that the BJP would decide on its position following a meeting with its allies on June 18.
Meanwhile, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party leaders in Maharashtra are miffed over the selection of Pratibha Patil as the UPA presidential candidate. The ideal candidate would have been the frontrunner federal home minister Shivraj Patil, but the Left parties had strongly objected to his nomination, said Vilas Pawar, a senior Youth Congress leader from Baramati town, the home turf of NCP President Sharad Pawar.
According to polls carried out by some research agencies, there were mixed reactions to the nomination of Pratibha Patil, with more than 70 percent of the people stating that she was a “weak candidate” and that she would face a tough fight from the NDA candidate and particularly from Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat who has strong personal relations with all political leaders.
Fears of Pratibha likely to lose the election was also expressed by majority of the people surveyed, who said that the election would witness cross voting which will help Shekhawat.
