Indian census on Muslims misleading: Liaqat Baloch

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LAHORE: Acting Ameer of the Jamaat e Islami, Liaqat Baloch, has said that India’s recent census report was misleading as it showed the Muslim population at only 170 million (13.43 per cent) as against the actual population ranging between 240 to 280 million.

In a statement here on Tuesday, he said that Indian Prime Minister Modi’ s enmity towards Islam and the Muslims was not a secret and it was feared that there was a calculated effort at the official level to alter the facts about Muslim population.

He said that the statistics on the basis of religion had been gathered in 2001 and were released this year.  As such, a heavy increase in the Muslim population during the last 14 years could not be denied.

Liaqat Baloch said that the famous Sacher Report released 25 years ago had revealed the miserable plight of the Indian Muslims. A vast majority of them was living below poverty line. The Muslims representation in the government jobs including armed forces, police and other agencies was negligible. The Muslim population in Assam was quite high but Indian government was showing them as Bangladeshis illegally living there. The Muslim population of Jammu and Kashmir was also not included on the ground that the situation there was no normal while it was an undeniable fact that the vast majority of the Kashmiris was  Muslims.