BJP national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said the INDIA bloc of the RJD-Congress-Left in Bihar has shown its disrespect for the Constitution, as the Act was passed by Parliament and is being adjudicated in the Supreme Court. They respect neither Parliament nor the judiciary, he said.
Addressing a press conference, he rejected opposition parties’ criticism of the Election Commission’s special intensive review of electoral rolls, which has started from the poll-bound Bihar, to weed out ineligible voters, as born out of their “defeatist mindset” in the face of their inevitable loss.
These parties want fake voters, while it is imperative to ensure that only eligible Indian citizens get to elect the government of their choice, he said. The EC has said the exercise, a regular mechanism, is aimed at including only eligible voters in the electoral rolls.
Opposition parties have claimed that it can exclude eligible voters willfully, an allegation that is an extension of their attack on the poll watchdog for working to benefit the ruling alliance. Assembly polls in Bihar are expected to be held in October-November.
Targeting opposition leaders for their strident criticism of the Waqf (Amendment) Act at the Patna rally, Trivedi said their alliance is driven by vote bank politics, a euphemism for its outreach to Muslim voters over the opposition to the Act from a large number of them.He alleged that the INDIA bloc wants to enforce Sharia provisions through the back door.States like Telangana and Karnataka are giving reservations to Muslims at the cost of quotas for Hindu OBCs, SCs and STs, and West Bengal is also trying to do it, he said.
He underlined the BJP-led NDA’s commitment to the values of the Constitution drafted by B R Ambedkar.
He said, “‘Samvidhan bachao’ is merely a facade of these parties as their true face is ‘sharia lao’. If they are in power, they will add ‘namazwaad’ to the Constitution’s preamble. They want to turn the Constitution into a Sharia script, but we will not allow it.”
RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav on Sunday claimed that the ruling NDA in Bihar was “on its way out”, and the new government in the state led by the opposition alliance will “consign to the dustbin” the Waqf Act brought by the Narendra Modi dispensation at the Centre.
The leader was addressing a ‘Save Waqf, Save Constitution’ rally at the historical Gandhi Maidan in Bihar’s capital, Patna.
The BJP spokesperson said the ruling National Democratic Alliance will not allow any provisions of Ambedkar’s Constitution to be thrown into the dustbin.
Slamming opposition parties, he said the Sharia provisions they are advocating are not in force in even Islamic countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Turkiye.
These parties want to concentrate huge portions of Waqf land into the hands of some self-appointed Muslim religious leaders, he said, adding that these properties were never used for the welfare of the community.
Socialism believes in the distribution of wealth, but socialist parties like the RJD and the Samajwadi Party are doing the opposite and are, in fact, with a few self-appointed Muslim leaders, he said. This is not “samajwaad but namazwaad”, he alleged.
While the country is observing the 50th anniversary of the Emergency, the Congress and its allies are suffering from the same mindset by asserting that they will throw a duly enacted law into the dustbin, he said.
The Quran makes no mention of Waqf, he said, adding that opposition parties are seeking to make a mockery of Ambedkar’s Constitution for “maulvis’ script”.
The BJP leader, who is a Rajya Sabha MP, recalled that the only time a party had over 400 MPs was during the 1984-89 period when the ruling Congress enacted a law to strike down the Supreme Court’s verdict in favour of granting alimony in the famous Shah Bano case due to pressure from orthodox sections of Muslims.
He said even RJD chief Lalu Yadav had once spoken about the alleged land grab by influential Muslims in the name of the then Waqf law.
Trivedi read out some famous lines of poet Adam Gondvi to mock the “hypocrisy” of socialist leaders.
