Zee Media Bureau
Lucknow: Maulana Tauqeer Rana, who is from a prominent family of clerics with a large number of Sunni Muslim followers in Bareilly, Saturday criticised Uttar Pradesh Minister Azam Khan for not visiting the relief camps in Muzaffarnagar and adjoining areas.
Rana, who heads a political outfit called the Ittehad-e-Millat Council mocked Azam Khan and said the UP Cabinet minister calls himself a Muslim leader but didn`t visited the relief camps even once.
The Akhilesh Yadav led-Samajwadi Party government in UP has been receiving flak over the communal violence in Muzaffarnagar.
Azam along with six other UP legislators at present are on a study tour to exotic locations in Europe.
In communal riots that broke out in September 2013, about 60 people died and nearly 50,000 people, mostly Muslims, fled their homes in fear. At least 40 children died after bitter cold set in with winter, as the flimsy tents the displaced lived in provided little protection.
The Uttar Pradesh government also faced flak for organising the fortnight-long Saifai Mahotsav, an extravaganza that the government said was an annual event to promote tourism, at Saifai in Etawah district, the native village of CM Akhilesh Yadav.
Last year ahead of Delhi Assembly elections, reports had emerged that Aam Aadmi Party convenor Arvind Kejriwal approached the Maulana to campaign for his party for the polls.
Ittehad-e-Millat Council had won a single Assembly seat in UP in 2012 elections.
