New Delhi: BJP on Monday pilloried Trinamool Congress for siding with Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind in opposing abolition of triple talaq in the country, saying it was playing vote bank politics without considering the plight of 1.5 crore Muslim women in West Bengal.
“Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her ministers are supporting triple talaq for vote bank politics and are using the sentiments of the minority community only for narrow political gains,” BJP state secretary Locket Chatterjee told newspersons here. “The chief minister, despite being a woman, is trying to push 1.5 crore Muslim women in the state into darkness and a life of uncertainty when BJP is trying to ensure equal rights for them,” Chatterjee claimed.
Criticising the TMC supremo for sending two of her senior ministers — Partha Chatterjee and Firhad Hakim — to a rally organised by another minister Siddiqulla Chowdhury, who is the leader of the West Bengal unit of Jamiat, Chatterjee said BJP today sent a complaint to the state Women’s Commission against contents of their speech there. Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind was joined by Trinamool Congress on November 5 in a protest rally against the BJP-led NDA government’s stand on triple talaq issue in connection with a case in the Supreme Court.
“They spoke openly against the rights of women and demeaned the process of empowerment of women,” the state BJP unit said in its complaint. The BJP leader said the complaint was related to “their (the three ministers) alleged inflammatory advocacy of deprivation of women’s rights and publicly renouncing the proceedings of the Supreme Court in the matter of rights of women issue.”
A copy of the complaint has also been forwarded to the chairperson of National Commission for Women, she said.
BJP state president Dilip Ghosh said, “It is intriguing that a woman chief minister has taken a stand in favour of triple talaq against all Muslim women and their rights.” “Mamata Banerjee alleges that BJP is a communal party, but this goes on to show that it is the chief minister herself who is doing communal politics,” Ghosh said. He said BJP would hold a sit-in demonstration against triple talaq on November 18 in Kolkata to be followed by similar protests in different parts of the state.