FLASH | Thursday, November 5, 2009 | Email | Print | 
No resolution on Vande Mataram passed before me: PC
PTI | New Delhi
Countering BJP's criticism, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said he was not present when the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind adopted a resolution in Deoband on Tuesday asking Muslims not to recite 'Vande Mataram'.
"Home Minister P Chidambaram was at the JUH conference at Deoband on November 3 between 10 am and 12 noon. No resolution was passed during that period. When he spoke, he was not aware of any resolution relating to Vande Mataram or women's reservation and television," a statement issued by his office said.
Besides, the Home Minister was reading from a prepared text and there was no occasion to depart from that text, the statement said reacting to criticism by BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who had said Chidambaram's presence at the programme "gave legitimacy to the resolution...It is a matter of concern."
In the resolution, the Jamiat had asked members of the community not to recite 'Vande Mataram' on the ground that some verses of the national song are against the tenets of Islam.
The Jamiat's opposition to the recitation of the song came when it supported seminary Darul Uloom's 'fatwa' (edict) which opposes any prayer involving the song.
BJP on Wednesday sought apology from the Home Minister as it was not satisfied by his clarification that he was not aware of Deoband resolution against recitation of Vande Mataram.
BJP, which condemned Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind's resolution on Tuesday and attacked Chidambaram for being part of the function where it was adopted, took a dig at him, saying he ought to know such things in advance.
"I am surprised that the Home Minister of a country in which terrorism, separatism and naxalism are at their peak was not aware that he was going to attend a programme where our national song Vande Mataram was insulted," BJP vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said.
He expressed "concern" over the fate of the country whose Home Minister had not been informed by intelligence agencies about the Vande Mataram resolution.
"The resolution was passed a day before Chidambaram attended the conference and the news had already appeared in newspapers and some news channels," he said.
Naqvi, one of the few Muslim faces of BJP, sought an apology from Chidambaram for the development.
The BJP leader had on Tuesday criticised Chidambaram for attending the Deoband programme where Jamiat-e- Ulema Hind had passed the resolution against singing of the national song.
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