by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : Calling the alleged assault on a Delhi bureaucrat a “conspiracy”, the ruling AAP on Wednesday said that its two MLAs — Prakash Jarwal and Amanatullah Khan — were arrested in the case without any inquiry because they belonged to the Dalit and Muslim community respectively.
Based on the allegation of assault made by Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash, the two were arrested on the BJP’s instructions without being given a chance to state their version, senior Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Sanjay Singh told the media.
Citing examples of Gujarat’s Una and Rajasthan’s Pehlu Khan’s case, Singh said under the BJP’s rule in various states, Dalits and Muslims were victims of communal violence.
Taking a dig at BJP Delhi unit Chief Manoj Tiwari, Singh said: “You call us urban Naxalites (Maoists)? We have never incited any violence (among different communities).”
He said the police ignored the evidence on the attack on AAP Minister Imran Hussain and his personal secretary Himanshu Singh but acted on the statement by the Chief Secretary.
“We have the video footage of what happened at Delhi Secretariat yesterday (Tuesday) when our Minister and his Personal Secretary were attacked by a mob that was incited by the BJP but nothing has been done about it.
“Words of the Chief Secretary are being treated as gospel truth,” he said, adding the top bureaucrat was making “false” allegations.
Party leader Ashutosh alleged that on Tuesday people outside the Delhi Secretariat were provoked and that led to the commotion and beating up of Hussain and his aide.
“CCTV footage should be made public to identify the perpetrators,” he demanded.
Singh said there was a conspiracy against their party and people were “strategically” brought to the Secretariat.
“Shouldn’t Home Minister (Rajnath Singh) show concern about ministers being assaulted inside Delhi Secretariat?”
“Will the same country have different rules for different people?” Singh questioned.
The AAP leader said that an emergency meeting was convened on Monday night to address the issue of 250,000 families who were deprived of food rations due to faulty implementation of Aadhaar.
“When the Chief Minister (Arvind Kejriwal) can visit people at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., why can’t there be a late night meeting regarding the important issue of rations?
“If somebody dies of hunger in the state, will the Chief Secretary be answerable or will it be the Lt Governor (Anil Baijal)? Arvind Kejriwal will be questioned,” he said.
According to the AAP leader, the Chief Secretary, who has alleged that AAP MLAs assaulted him in the presence of Kejriwal during the meeting, would have called police immediately after the incident if he was actually assaulted.
“Anybody physically assaulted by someone would immediately call the police. Why didn’t the Chief Secretary do so? The next morning he started making these allegations against our MLAs.
Asking why the Chief Secretary’s injury report wasn’t prepared by a doctor on the same day, Sanjay Singh said: “The medico-legal certificate is coming today when the incident happened three days back.”
Stressing that this was a BJP-led Central government’s conspiracy against the AAP, he said: “To be associated with AAP is considered to be a crime by the Centre.
“AAP is always the soft target. The government now wishes to take the attention away from Nirav Modi, (Vikram) Kothari, Jatin Mehta and that is why this thing was brought up.”
“Since the very beginning, there have been attempts to finish our government in the state. They don’t want us to function.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
Salman Khurshid
By Prashant Sood,
New Delhi : The triple talaq bill is a step towards imposing a Uniform Civil Code and the judicial verdict on the practice is a lesson for the Muslim community that matters such as polygamy and nikah halala might similarly end up in court if reformative steps are not taken, Congress leader Salman Khurshid has said.
Khurshid, who has written a book “Triple Talaq: Examining Faith” (OUP/pp 260/Rs 316), said a bill on the subject that is pending in parliament “does not make sense” as the practice has been outlawed by the Supreme Court.
Khurshid, a former External Affairs Minister, accused the BJP-led government of pursuing a “divisive agenda.”
“What is the effect of taking away triple talaq? This is what I have tried to say in my book — that triple talaq is bad. We are not for it. It’s a silly way of giving talaq.
“But there is no difference between talaq and triple talaq, except that talaq is reversible and triple talaq is irreversible,” Khurshid told IANS in an interview.
Asked if the reform on triple talaq should have come from within the Muslim community, Khurshid said: “I agree that this is something that the Muslim community, through its chosen leaders, should have addressed before the court took hold of it. And, therefore, this is a lesson about other matters that might similarly end up in court if the community does not take steps to reform.”
Asked to elaborate, he said: “Polygamy is one such thing and the nikah halala is another one. I think there are good ways of showing and explaining that both of them do not pose as great a threat to equality as is made out to be, but certainly popular perception about them is very bad. Therefore they should be addressed from within the community.”
As per “nikah halala”, a woman divorcee has to marry someone else and consummate this marriage before getting a divorce to remarry her earlier husband.
Khurshid noted that only a microscopic percentage of the Muslim community resorts to instant triple talaq and reforms normally happen if something becomes overwhelming and people think it is becoming a burden. “If it is microscopic, it often gets overlooked, neglected. And then there were larger issues that people amongst Muslims were preoccupied with,” he said.
Asked if the triple talaq bill was a step towards imposing Uniform Civil Code (UCC), he said: “Yes, it certainly is.”
“There is a hidden agenda, or not-so-well hidden agenda, there of trying to impose (the UCC). But even (for) trying to impose it, this is a very shabby way of doing it. You can’t impose the code on the peril of criminal culpability. If it it’s to be introduced, it has to be introduced as a code and that code is not criminal. The code has to be a civilian code.”
Khurshid said talaq is part of personal law and nobody has challenged it.
“It is only triple talaq that has been challenged, and the world over the understanding is that triple talaq or a talaq said three times, six times, 100 times, is only to be considered as talaq said once and talaq said once is perfectly valid and, therefore, triple talaq’s first talaq is also perfectly valid,” Khurshid said.
He said the Congress is very clearly against the criminalising element in the triple talaq bill.
“To impose criminal liability in essentially a civil matter, which is the matter of a family affair, I think, is wrong. Also on fundamental jurisprudential principles, to punish somebody for something that does not exist is against the principles of criminology,” he said.
The Congress and several other opposition parties have said that the bill, which is pending in the Rajya Sabha after the Lok Sabha passed it, should be examined by a select committee.
Khurshid said even women who are against triple talaq have not come out in favour of criminalisation.
Khurshid, who assisted the court during the triple talaq hearing, said if the government is genuinely concerned about divorced women, it should provide for them irrespective of the community they belong to.
Accusing the BJP of pursuing a “silly divisive agenda” to portray Muslims as “regressive”, “counter-productive for modern society” and Muslim society being divided among men and women, Khurshid said: “That is a completely wrong understanding of Muslim society.”
He said the BJP was “grievously mistaken” if it thinks it will get votes of Muslim women due to the triple talaq bill. “You think Muslim women don’t watch television and see what happened to Pehlu Khan and Mohammad Akhlaq who were killed by cow vigilantes? I think it is a very myopic understanding of Muslim women.”
Asked about the perception that the BJP got votes from the Muslim community in (last year’s) Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, Khurshid said: “That’s an impression they give. I have very serious doubts.”
He said the government will not find the going easy on the bill as it lacks a majority in the upper house.
“They still do not have strength to pass it in the house. They may get the strength after a year or whatever, and they just have to wait till then. And then there will be matter of testing it in the courts. It is not smooth sailing as they might imagine,” Khurshod conteded.
(Prashant Sood can be reached at prashant.s@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Panaji Corporation Commissioner Ajit Roy
Panaji : Recital of prayers over loudspeakers at one of the largest Muslim burial grounds here banned by the city municipal corporation, it was revealed on Wednesday. The order drew protests from the Muslim community have demanded that the measure be withdrawn.
Panaji Corporation Commissioner Ajit Roy, in an order issued here earlier this week, has said that the order was passed in order to prevent breach of peace and tranquility in nearby areas.
“It has been brought to the notice from surrounding area at St. Inez, Panaji, that the prayers are carried out through loudspeakers/public address system with very high decibels at the burial ground of Muslim(s) kabrasthan (graveyard) at St. Inez,” said the order dated November 24, when city was playing host to the 48th International Film Festival of India, the country’s biggest film event.
“The community should ensure that no prayers to be held on Muslim burial ground/kabrastan by loud speakers/public address systems so as to avoid disturbing the public peace and tranquility in the surrounding area,” the order further reads.
In a statement issued here, the Jamat ul Muslamin Gausia Sunni trust condemned the order.
“Prayers are carried out at the masjid and not at the burial ground. This is now a tradition going on for the last 20 years… This move has really hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims and the Corporation should immediately withdraw the notice or the community will gherao the Commissioner,” trust spokesperson Babni Shaikh told reporters here.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : In a landmark judgment, the Supreme Court on Tuesday by a 3-2 decision struck down the centuries-old practice of instant triple talaq among Indian Muslims as unconstitutional, manifestly arbitrary and void in law.
However, the minority judgment concluded that “talaq-e-biddat” was a matter of personal law of Muslims that does not breach the Constitution’s Article 25 (right to practice one’s religion).
Chief Justice J.S. Khehar and Justice S. Abdul Nazeer constituting the minority in the five-bench Constitutional bench ordered an injunction on triple talaq at least for six months — by when the government should consider steps to initiate legislation on the issue.
The other three judges disagreed.
“In view of the different opinions recorded, by a majority of 3:2 the practice of talaq-e-biddat – triple talaq – is set aside,” the bench comprising Justices Khehar, Kurian Joseph, Rohinton F. Nariman, U.U. Lalit and Abdul Nazeer said in the concluding para of the 395-page ruling.
The apex court gave its judgment on a petition filed by Muslim woman Shayara Bano, joined by a Muslim group and four other women.
Justice Nariman and Justice Lalit, who were part of the majority judgment, said: “Given that triple talaq is instant and irrevocable, it is obvious that any attempt at reconciliation between the husband and wife by two arbiters from their families, which is essential to save the marital tie, cannot ever take place.
“…This being the case, it is clear that this form of talaq is manifestly arbitrary in the sense that the marital tie can be broken capriciously and whimsically by a Muslim man without any attempt at reconciliation so as to save it.
“This form of talaq must, therefore, be held to be violative of the fundamental right contained under Article 14 of the Constitution,” they said, adding the 1937 Shariah Act must be struck down.
In a concurring but separate judgment, Justice Joseph said: “What is held to be bad in the Holy Quran cannot be good in Shariat and, in that sense, what is bad in theology is bad in law as well.”
He said he found it extremely difficult to agree with the Chief Justice that triple talaq has to be considered integral to the religious denomination and it was part of their personal law.
He said merely because a practice has continued for long, that by itself cannot make it valid if it has been expressly declared to be impermissible.
He said when issues of such nature come to the forefront, the discourse often takes the form of pitting religion against other constitutional rights.
In his minority judgment, Justice Khehar said it would not be appropriate for the court to record a finding whether talaq-e-biddat was or was not affirmed by Hadiths (Prophet’s sayings) in view of the enormous contradictions in the Hadiths relied upon by rival parties.
“Talaq-e-biddat is integral to the religious denomination of Sunnis belonging to the Hanafi school. The same is a part of their faith, having been followed for more than 1,400 years, and as such, has to be accepted as being constituent of their ‘personal law’.”
“The … practice cannot therefore be set aside … through judicial intervention.”
The minority judgment observed that there was seemingly an overwhelming majority of Muslim women demanding that triple talaq, “which is sinful in theology, be declared as impermissible in law”.
The judges noted that during the hearing, learned counsel appearing for the rival parties described the practice as unpleasant, distasteful and unsavoury. Others called it disgusting, loathsome and obnoxious.
The minority judgment said religion was a matter of faith and not of logic and it was not open to a court to accept an egalitarian approach over a traditional practice.
They said it was not for a court to determine whether religious practices were prudent or progressive or regressive.
The judges said the stance adopted by the Union Government supports the petitioners’ cause and observed: “Unfortunately, the union seeks at our hand, what truly falls in its own.”
—IANS
