New Delhi: A day after Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and former Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav said that the INDI Alliance – if voted to power in Bihar – would relegate the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025 to the dustbin, the BJP hit back strongly on Monday and attacked the Congress-RJD-Samajwadi Party combine in the state for standing with ‘Namazwad’ instead of remaining true to the ideological tenets of Socialism.
Indicating that the Bihar Assembly elections will be a ‘no holds barred’ affair, BJP national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said it is the BJP, with its ally the Janata Dal (United) that truly stands for the socialist principle of equal distribution of wealth.
“We have recently commemorated 50 years of the blackest chapter in the history of the country’s democracy, that the Emergency was. It is saddening that in the same Gandhi Maidan where, during the Emergency, lakhs had gathered to protect the Constitution, an INDI Alliance leader, Tejashwi Yadav, said that we will throw a law which has been ratified by Parliament into the dustbin,” Trivedi said at a press conference.
Tejashwi had said this at a protest organised against the Act by the Imarat-e-Shariah on Sunday.
“They will neither respect Parliament nor the judiciary when it comes to their need for a vote bank… It is clear that the INDI Alliance is unable to get out of the 50-year-old mindset of throwing the Constitution in the dustbin,” Trivedi added.
The BJP and the NDA, Trivedi said, are committed to stopping any such attack on B R Ambedkar’s Constitution or its provisions. He also questioned whether the provisions of the Waqf Act, which the INDI Alliance and its leaders were against, existed in Islamic nations such as Saudi Arabia, where Islam was born, or Indonesia which is the largest Islamic nation or others including Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh or even ISIS-dominated parts of Syria and Iraq.
“I want to ask the INDI Alliance — are you thinking of establishing a bigger Sharia law in Bihar (than these countries)? I want to ask the parties wearing the cloak of socialism, such as the RJD and Samajwadi Party: Is equal distribution of wealth not what it says? What you are saying is that a handful of people should have control over 39 lakh acres of land,” he alleged.
“This mentality is against the principles of socialism… The socialism of the RJD and SP cannot be called that, but what is being called ‘namazwad’ on social media… Today it is we (the NDA), who are standing with the socialism of Bharat Ratna Karpoori Thakur, Jaiprakash Narayan and (Ram Manohar) Lohia by seeking that each poor gets their due… Today, it is the BJP and JDU who are standing with Samajwad while the RJD and SP are with Namazwad,” he added.
It was through granting minority status to institutions, Trivedi alleged, that the INDI Alliance sought to snatch reservations from those belonging to the SC/ST/OBC communities “through the backdoor.”
“We will not let these people succeed in their aim, the land that belongs to the people of the country will remain theirs…the country will function according to Ambedkar’s Constitution and not the provisions of Shariah,” he said.
