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| MF Hussain enters to blur Azad's Aligarh roadmap for Congress | | | ABID SHAH
Early Times Report
NEW DELHI, Apr 25: Congress point man Ghulam Nabi Azad's moves to help his party bosses in putting a minority savvy image, courtesy Aligarh Muslim University have indeed landed up the party in a soup.
This has also put the university's annual convocation on hold for which AMU has sought consent from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and famed painter MF Hussain for accepting honorary degrees at the 2010 AMU convocation which has overshot schedule as it should have taken place by the end of the last month. But so far the Congress top brass have neither accepted, nor declined the university's offer to confer honorary degrees on them and the convocation remains on hold. A weekly published from Delhi has reported that the Congress bosses are in a quandary since AMU has "bracketed" them with MF Hussain who renounced his Indian citizenship to become a citizen of Qatar though this was after AMU Registrar Professor VK Abdul Jaleel extended the offer for honorary degree to the great painter. AMU has not only been centrepiece to Congress strategy in winning Muslim support but the party has also been sending Azad to Aligarh while tinkering with plans like opening AMU's affiliated campuses in far off Bihar and West Bengal. So much so that AMU Staff (Teachers') Association passed a resolution in January this year for honouring Ghulam Nabi Azad by making him Chancellor, the highest though ceremonial post, of the university.
Early Times has reported this - Ghulam Nabi's forays into AMU - in its issue dated February 3, 2010 soon after the Union Health Minister visited AMU campus and advised a probe and reexamination of postgraduate admissions in University's Medical College in the wake of agitation by aspirants. This was immediately accepted by Vice Chancellor Professor PK Abdul Azis.
And, thus, everything has been going on well vis-à-vis Azad and Congress' plan for reaching Muslims via Aligarh till this roadmap got blurred and MF Hussain entered the list of those to be decorated with university's honorary degrees. This is more so after he ceased to be an Indian national, albeit his own choice. The Delhi periodical, "Open" that has pointed out this in its latest issue says, "the wait (for convocation) may prove longer than Professor Jaleel (registrar) expects." The magazine quotes a senior Congress leader from party's minority loop, "Neither the Congress president nor the Prime Minister wants to step into an embarrassing situation by getting bracketed with MF Hussain who only recently relinquished Indian citizenship to become a national of Qatar." This is in sharp contrast to the highly successful visit of Rahul Gandhi to Aligarh campus last year in December which was reported by this newspaper on December 9, 2009. Thus, Congress' sustained efforts wooing Aligarh seem to be going awry. And this cannot be more bothersome to anybody than Ghulam Nabi Azad for it may take a lot of firefighting by him and party peers before the plan for the Aligarh convocation is recast, redrawn and saved from further delay.
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