New Delhi: To shed its image of being a Hindutva and upper caste party, BJP said on Sunday that it had got support of Muslims, SC and ST communities in the recent Assembly elections even as it noted that it did not believe in vote bank politics and minority appeasement.
In his valedictory address at the BJP national council meet here, BJP patriarch L K Advani said the "Muslim community" has lost confidence in Congress and his party has a big support among them.
"Muslims have seen how successive governments have done nothing for them. They have only been used (as vote bank)," he said.
Advani said BJP believed in integral humanisn which did not discriminate between people on basis of religion and wanted development of all.
"In this there is no relevance of minority-majority," he said.
Senior BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu cited data to insist that his party is winning support of Muslims as well. At the same time, he argued that Muslim support for Congress is fast dwindling.
"All the minority candidates of Congress in Rajasthan lost. BJP achieved 50 per cent success. Congress had fielded 16 Muslim candidates in the state and none of them won while BJP fielded four Muslim candidates of whom two won," he said.
The party also claimed to have got votes of Muslims in Madhya Pradesh.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi had alleged that BJP is a communal party which seeks to divide the country.
BJP was critical of policies of the Congress-led UPA government towards fighting terrorism and alleged that the dispensation had "mortgaged" terror for the sake of vote bank politics.
The party referred to the letter written by Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde to chief ministers to review cases of terror involving individuals from the minority community.
Naidu said not just Muslims but also Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe voters were upset with Congress.
"In Chhattisgarh, Congress won only one of the nine seats reserved for SCs, while in Delhi it got one and none in Rajasthan. In Madhya Pradesh, BJP won 28 out of the 35 SC seats," Naidu said.
He also said the maximum number of ST seats in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh were won by BJP while Congress won negligible number of seats in this category.
