Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu says terror groups misusing religion to achieve political ends

New Delhi: Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu said on Tuesday that no religion accepts terrorism and terror groups were misusing religion to achieve their political ends. [caption id=“attachment_3898649” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu. PTI[/caption] Stating that some people had objections to his recent comment that terror has no religion, he said, “Anybody who is taking the name of religion and choosing the path of terror is against humanity. This is what I meant.” “I am very clear. Every religion has to be understood properly,” Naidu said while delivering the 10th annual lecture of the National Commission for Minorities in New Delhi. The vice-president said “no religion accepts terrorism” and terror groups were misusing religion to achieve their political ends. “If you encourage terror, you will become the victim of terror tomorrow. This is what is happening. We are seeing it in our neighbourhood also,” he said, adding that some countries were aiding and funding terrorism. Noting that people are free to pray to any God they believe, Naidu said he visits ‘dargah’ whenever he goes to his village. “Many people get surprised (when I tell them that I go to dargah). Now that I am not in politics, I can freely talk about it. If I would have been in politics, then people would have said that he was saying it because of political reasons,” he said. Naidu said that politics was a mission but some politicians had converted it into a “commission”. He urged all politicians to “think of nation first”. The vice-president also highlighted the contribution of minority communities, especially in the field of education and medicine. In his address, Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that over the last three years, the representation of Muslim community in the Central government jobs has increased from 4.5 percent to 9.8 percent. The government has laid special emphasis on the empowerment of women belonging to the minority communities, he said. The theme of the lecture was ‘Minorities in Nation Building’.