Housing apartheid against Muslims rampant in India

With the already existing intolerance towards the Muslim minorities, yet another incident confirming the discrimination came to the fore when popular property website 99acres.com published an advertisement seeking applications for rent in a Mumbai flat. The ad was uploaded by broker Vishal D’Souza on October 27 and it read, “Excellent brand new 2BHK fully furnished flat with cross ventilation, natural light. Cosmopolitan societies, no Muslims, with car parking on immediate sale, fifth floor interested please call.”

99acres.com removed the advertisement after prominent activist Shehzad Poonawalla filed a petition with the National Commission for Minorities seeking action against the agent and the website. The company apologized saying, “Our Company is totally against such discriminatory practices. At any point of time 99acres has over 400,000 classified listings. These are uploaded directly by advertisers on the site using our self-service online interface. We are in the process of putting in place more rigorous checks and processes to prevent the recurrence of such listings. We are deeply embarrassed that our site was misused in this manner.” On Friday, the Maharashtra state minority commission promised an inquiry in response to Poonawalla’s petition.

Minorities commission chairperson Munaf Hakim said, “There are several cases of discrimination against minorities in housing that have come up before. We have taken action in the past, for example against society registrars. We will speak with the authorities concerned and take action.” Following the 99acre.com controversy, an investigation into such property portals revealed that this was a common tendency in such websites.

Caption: www.indianmuslimobserver.com

Infoeditor