PM: Does Cong stand for Muslim men only?
Modi lashes out at Opposition parties for scuttling triple talaq bill, lays foundation stone of 341km Purvanchal Expressway in Azamgarh
AZAMGARH : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday accused the Congress of being the biggest hurdle in the passage of triple talaq bill and said he wanted to ask whether the party was for Muslim men alone. He also criticised the Opposition over ‘dynastic politics’.
Modi, who was speaking at a function organised to lay the foundation stone of 341-km Purvanchal Expressway in Azamgarh, said: “The stand of these parties on triple ‘talaq’ has exposed them. On the one side, we are trying to make the lives of women easy. On the other side, these Opposition parties have grouped together to make the lives of women, especially Muslim women, difficult.”
The PM’s remarks come ahead of the monsoon session of Parliament where a bill abolishing instant divorce among Muslims, already passed in the Lok Sabha, is pending in the Rajya Sabha.
The Congress and some other opposition parties have expressed reservations on the bill, and the ruling BJP has accused them of trying to stall it.
“I have read in newspapers that the Congress president has said that the Congress is a party of Muslims; I am not surprised by this. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had also said that Muslims had the first claim to the natural resources of the country. All I want to ask them: is their party for Muslim men alone or for women too?” he said.
In a fresh outreach to Muslim women, Modi said triple talaq was banned even in Islamic countries, but here parties like the Congress were trying to stall the triple talaq bill.
Modi struck a chord with the huge gathering as he began his speech in Bhojpuri, the dialect of the region.
Azamgarh has a sizeable Muslim population and is the parliamentary constituency of Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.
But with Yadav having announced his decision to contest from Mainpuri in 2019, the BJP is trying to wrest the seat from the SP and use the opportunity to consolidate its position in this belt dominated by the backward castes.
In the 2017 assembly polls, the BJP routed Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) almost everywhere else in the state, but it (the BJP) managed to win just one of Azamgarh’s nine assembly seats.
The Congress has 50 members in the Upper House and the opposition will need 123 votes to win in case there is an election for the post of deputy chairman. The ruling BJP has 69 members.
The support of other nonaligned parties — the BJD of Orissa, the two parties from Andhra Pradesh, TN‘s ruling AIADMK, and the TRS - is crucial. The Congress is also hoping the disgruntled NDA constituent Shiv Sena will support the NCP, whose four members in the Upper House are all fromt Maharashtra. If an NCP candidate is put up, state loyalty could serve as a bond. The NCP is also banking on the support of the AAP, the PDP of Jammu and Kashmir and even the JD(U), which has six members and is yet to announce its support to the BJP on the issue. Monday’s meeting, to be chaired by Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, will also chalk out the strategy for the upcoming monsoon session, beginning July 18. It will also take a call on the Telugu Desam Party’s appeal to all political parties to support its move to bring a no-confidence motion against the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government in the session.