Triple talaq had been given political patronage by “merchants of the vote-bank” and the Narendra Modi government took a big step by declaring it a criminal offence, said Minority Affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi while marking the first anniversary of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019 on Friday.
Naqvi, while addressing Muslim women across the nation via video conferencing, said that the move has highly bolstered the selfreliance and self-confidence among Muslim women. He also stated that triple talaq cases have reduced drastically after the enactment of the law in the country.
The occasion also saw Muslim women from places like New Delhi, Greater Noida, Lucknow, Varanasi, Jaipur, Mumbai, Bhopal, Hyderabad and Tamil Nadu’s Krishnagiri area being addressed by Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Union Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani.
Naqvi further mentioned that the Modi government is committed to political empowerment and not “political exploitation”. He added that August 1 will be reworded as ‘Muslim Women’s Rights Day’ in history as Muslim women were freed from the social evil of instant triple talaq.
In an apparent dig at the Congress, Naqvi also said that ‘talaq-e-biddat’ was “neither Islamic, nor legal”, but despite that, “political patronage” was given to it by “merchants of the vote bank”. “In the 1980s, when the Supreme Court passed the historic judgement in the Shah Bano case, the law against triple talaq could have also been passed,” Naqvi said. “The Congress had an absolute majority in Parliament with more than 400 out of 545 Lok Sabha members and more than 159 out of 245 members in the Rajya Sabha. But the Rajiv Gandhi government used its strength in Parliament to make the Supreme Court judgement ineffective and deprive Muslim women of their constitutional and fundamental rights,” Naqvi said.
“To give effect to that judgment, the Modi government passed the law against triple talaq,” he added. “A year has gone by since the law against triple talaq was passed and there is about 82% decline in triple talaq cases thereafter. If any such case was reported, action was taken under the law,” he concluded.