Lucknow: Some Muslim intellectuals here today (April 2, 2004) have floated a new outfit named after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and said they would reach out to Muslim masses and ask them to assess the performance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government.

The new outfit, Atal Behari Vajpayee Himayat Committee, declared that Muslims will be told as to how they had been exploited by the various political parties who gained by painting the BJP as anti-Muslim and would be asked to assess the saffron party on the basis of its performance during the last five years, the national convenor of the Committee, Khwaja Iftikhar Ahmed, said.

Claiming that the Committee was not a representative of the community and would not be issuing an appeal in favour of any party, Ahmed said a new discussion has been initiated among the Muslim intellectuals who think that neither the Prime Minister nor the NDA was anti-Muslim and the terror created against them was unfounded and baseless.