Stepping up its attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Telangana CM and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) Chief K Chandrasekhar Rao on Monday decided to oppose the contentious Uniform Civil Code (UCC).
The decision comes hours after members of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board which also includes AIMIM Chief Asaduddin Owaisi called on KCR at the CM’s camp office in Pragati Bhavan and urged him to oppose the UCC. The members also requested KCR to reach out to other like-minded parties and bring them on board.
Calling the UCC “detrimental to India’s diversity and an attempt to divide the country”, the official statement quoting the Chief Minister said: “It is clear that the imposition of UCC is a malicious attempt by the Union government to instigate people by promoting divisive politics, raking up clashes between the communities to derive political benefits through the UCC bill.”
The Chief Minister also said that the ongoing debate over the UCC has pushed tribals, Hindus and other sections of the society with varied culture and traditions, into a state of confusion. He also directed parliamentary party leaders K. Keshava Rao and Nama Nageshwar to prepare an action plan to fight against the centre in both houses of Parliament.
Owaisi Appeals to Andhra CM to Oppose UCC
After meeting KCR, Owaisi also made an appeal to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy to oppose the UCC.
The Lok Sabha MP from Hyderabad said that the BJP is threatening India’s secularism and pluralism in the name of UCC. “If introduced, UCC will also affect Christians, tribals, and India’s diversity on the whole. PM Modi is misleading the nation by making statements like how can one family be governed by two different laws. Both BJP and RSS have a problem with India’s pluralism,” he said.
Speaking about AIMIM’s stand on the UCC, party spokesperson Waris Pathan said, “We oppose the UCC. The Law Commission has stated that there is no need for Uniform Civil Code in the country. In the Constitution given by Dr BR Ambedkar, everyone’s fundamental rights are protected through Articles 14,16, 26 and 29. Article 29 states that any section of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same. We have various people in the country practising different cultures. How can you bring UCC then? Most importantly, there is no draft for UCC yet. The BJP is just trying to polarise people using UCC.”
However, the BJP says that the UCC is beyond politics.
NVSS Prabhakar, vice president of Telangana BJP, said that the UCC Bill is going to be tabled in the Parliament. “Right now, our PM Narendra Modi is trying to build a consensus on the issue before the tabling. An overwhelming number of people in the country support UCC and the PM is trying to bring that to the people. This issue is above politics,” he told News18.
“In the case of abrogation of Article 370, we saw that though parties maintained a stand officially, many individuals cutting across party lines supported the move. It was due to this support that the Bill was passed in both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha. There was a vertical split among many parties regarding the issue. In the case of UCC too, the same pattern may be repeated,” he added.
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