New Delhi: Hitting out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for raking up the Hijab row and the issue of Uniform Civil Code (UCC) during the ongoing assembly elections, Congress leader Salman Khurshid on Sunday said that the saffron party is ‘jittery’ as its hold over the electorate is seemingly slipping.
Speaking to news agency PTI during an interview, Khurshid said BJP’s stand on the hijab controversy and UCC reflects their ‘complete and total bankruptcy of ideas’.
It also shows BJP’s complete lack of confidence in their performance over the last seven years, the former Union minister added.
Stressing that the hijab issue is being raised as a polarization strategy, Khurshid, as quoted by PTI, said, “Hijab is not something that started yesterday, Hijab has been going on for a long time…it is a known fact that Hijab has been there for a long time and girls have been using the Hijab in an appropriate manner in terms of color and so on. Why should they be raising it today? It is very clear that they are using it for a very devious reason.”
Pointing out that the courts have taken a clear view over the matter, the Congress leader said that most sensible people would understand that this is a question of personal liberty and it is no different from a man wearing a cap and a ‘paggad’, or a Sikh wearing a turban, because these are all issues that relate to either religious practice or beliefs or even cultural and social beliefs, and all are protected by rights under the Constitution.
Lashing out at the Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami over BJP’s decision to form a committee to prepare a draft Uniform Civil Code (UCC) if re-elected to power in the hill state, Khurshid said they don’t even know what a UCC is and have never articulated what it is.
“Does the UCC mean that the Hindu law will be altered and it would be made compatible with the Islamic law or Christian law, or will Christian or Islamic law be altered to make it compatible with the Hindu law,” Khurshid asked.
The Congress leader further said that there are different religions in the country, including Buddhism and Jainism and they have different personal laws and laws of conduct. For anyone to say that they will have a UCC, they first have to clarify what they mean by it and also make it clear how the move will add to the quality of national life. Raising such issues highlights BJP’s lack of confidence and its “hold over the electorate beginning to slip,” he said.
“I think that is why they are reaching out to such completely irrelevant things,” Khurshid added.
Speaking about the issue of polarization, Khurshid said that BJP is already aware of their complete failure over the last term of governance and have decided to resort to a ploy that has worked for them in the past. But hopefully that is something that is unlikely to work again, he said, adding, “There is no doubt that they are jittery.”
Khurshid also said that not announcing a Chief Ministerial face was not a cause of concern for the Congress in UP, as the party has Priyanka Gandhi Vadra leading from the front.
“It is not felt necessary that we should signify as to how that face is also the face of a CM. We generally don’t announce CM faces, Sheila (Dikshit) ji was a chief minister of great substance and success but we did not declare her in advance,” PTI quoted Khurshid as saying.
“I am getting more and more of the sense that people are beginning to see through their tricks, including people who have supported them (BJP) in the past few years and I hope this will have an impact on the actual result ” said Khurshid, whose wife Louise Khurshid is contesting from UP’s Farrukhabad.
Quizzed on the question of a probable bipolar contest between the BJP and SP in Uttar Pradesh this time, as pointed out by some of the political experts, Khurshid said that calling the election a bipolar one is a “little bit of an exaggeration” as a lot depends on how the seats pan out in terms of who the candidates are, and what kind of communities each seat has, in terms of percentages.
“It would be a little bit short-sighted and premature to say that the contest is bipolar. When the dust settles, it may well be that there is a front runner to challenge the BJP,” he said.
Expressing confidence that the Congress would ‘bounce back’ as would be reflected in the results on March 10, Khurshid said, “We have had a very dismal record in the past few years and we have fought very hard under Priyanka Gandhi ji to bounce back and make our presence felt. We will emphatically register ourselves on the landscape.”
Pointing out that the party is fighting on all the seats in Uttar Pradesh after a long time, Khurshid said that with the Congress fighting these seats with 40 per cent going to women, a permanent mark will be left on the politics of UP one way or the other.
“This will not be the end of the story of the Congress party’s revival, this will be the beginning of that story,” Khurshid said.
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