Uttar Pradesh elections: Union Minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Smriti Irani, who is in the midst of campaigning for the party’s candidates in the forthcoming assembly elections, today challenged Samajwadi Party leader and UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s wife and Member of Parliament (MP) from Kannauj constituency Dimple Yadav, and Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi, who is expected to campaign for her party’s candidates, to speak up on triple talaq row instead of maintaining a stoic silence on this pressing issue that affects the welfare of Muslim women.
Speaking to the media during a raucous party campaign, Irani said that not just Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and UP CM Yadav should clear their parties’ stand on the issue, even the women leaders there should also come out and discuss the issue so that a better and lasting solution to the problem could be found. Both Congress and Samajwadi Party expect a large part of the Muslim community to vote for them and they have not cleared their stance on the issue of women’s rights, especially on triple talaq, providing the BJP with an issue to corner them.
Speaking to Times Now, Irani said, “Dimple Yadav and Priyanka Gandhi should share their views on the topic of women’s rights. All should come and discuss to clarify their stance”. She added that the time has come for the state to move forward on empowering women and this can be a major issue to push progress on. She added that her party would speak to the community concerned and present their version.
BJP has cleared its stance that it wants triple talaq to be ended as it puts wives under Islam under great threat and that the tradition denies respect to women – the party has even dubbed it an ‘evil social practice’. Speaking to the media on Saturday Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said the government may even take the step to ban triple talaq after the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
BJP wants the application of Uniform Civil Code (UCC) across the country irrespective of community, caste or religion. While the BJP has spoken about this issue many times over the years, PM Narendra Modi had articulated it strongly in his many speeches where he has made a clarion call for women’s empowerment.