Talking to mediapersons, the State president of SP, Hussein Dalwai, said that the Congress and the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance were two sides of the same coin. While neglecting the welfare of Muslims, they just paid lipservice towards the grievances of minorities, he alleged.

Muslims had been treated as second class citizens during the regimes of the Congress as well as the Sena-BJP alliance, and were only being used by them for getting votes and conveniently forgotten till the next elections, he said. Muslims had been deliberately kept out of the police force, defence and civil services, where their proportion was just 1.5 to 2 per cent. He further said that out of the 600-odd LPG distributors in the State, only six were Muslims.

Dalwai further said that the SP was committed to the welfare of Muslims and would pursue its demandof creating a separate corporation for the economic welfare of the community. He said that his party would form a third front in alliance with the leftist parties and the Republican Party of India (Prakash Ambedkar group) instead of supporting the Congress.

Dalwai, who is also in MLC, was in Nashik for his party's meeting. The SP has organised a State-level conference here on May 1 and 2, when several top leaders of the party including Mulayam Singh Yadav would address party workers and deliberate on the SP's policy in view of the forthcoming assembly polls.