Assembly elections have been announced in Maharashtra. Even before the implementation of the Model Code of Conduct, the Mahayuti government had started many schemes. Now the government has now included many dargahs in one of these pilgrimage darshan schemes. These include Haji Ali Dargah, Mumbai, Haji Malang Dargah Kalyan and Diwanshah Dargah Bhiwandi. Apart from Muslims, holy places of Parsis, Buddhists and Jain communities have also been included in this list.
Under the Teerth Darshan Scheme, the Maharashtra government provides assistance of Rs 30,000 per person to senior citizens above 60 years of age for visiting any one Teerth. However, the condition is that the family income of the person should not be more than Rs 2.5 lakh. The proposal for this scheme was released on 15 October. Under this, 95 holy places in Maharashtra and 15 outside Maharashtra were added.
Plan to woo minorities?
This step of the Mahayuti government is also being seen as a plan for electoral gains. Political experts say that adding minority places in the scheme before the elections is a game of chance for vote bank. Samajwadi MLA Raees Shaikh has welcomed this step of the government. However, he said that the Mahayuti government is doing all this only for political gains. He said, when the scheme was launched in July, a question was raised as to why not a single Muslim place was included in it. I myself had written a letter to CM Shinde that people of Muslim community should also be included in this. I am happy that now many places have been included in it.
Sheikh said that the inclusion of Muslim places ahead of the elections shows the government’s intentions. Maharashtra is the land of saints. There are shrines of Sufi saints in this state and Hindus also visit there. There are shrines of Haji Ali and Haji Malang in the state. Despite knowing the history, the government did not include them in the scheme. From this one can guess about his nature.
