Ghulam Nabi Azad said new Congress leadership in the past nine years ignored minorities (File)
The outcome of elections in four states will have a bearing on next year's Lok Sabha polls, Democratic Progressive Azad Party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said today.
"We are just there-and-a-half months away from the Lok Sabha elections. The results of these (assembly) polls will definitely have a bearing on the parliamentary elections," Mr Azad said earlier today when the trends began to come in.
The BJP is set to win in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh, according to the latest counting trends, while the Congress is ahead in Telangana.
"One thing I have noticed over the past 25 days is that the Congress has abandoned the minorities. The debates from both the BJP and the Congress were limited to the backward classes - they asked about how many chief ministers are from backward classes," Azad said.
"Not one leader from the Congress asked even once how many Chief Ministers are there from the minorities," he added.
Ghulam Nabi Azad, who quit the Congress to form the Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP), said while the BJP is not expected to talk about the minorities, the Congress has also abandoned them in favour of the SCs and the STs over the years.
"It is a matter of concern and needs pondering over. While Indira Gandhi would talk about the Muslims and the SCs being poor, it later became minorities and SCs. The new leadership over the past eight-nine years has ignored the minorities and limited itself to only the SCs and the STs," he added.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)