Rewa/Satna: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday said that the BJP does not discriminate between Hindus and Muslims and that the respect of women is of paramount importance to it, citing the ban on triple talaq.
Addressing public meetings in Madhya Pradesh’s Rewa and Satna districts to drum up support for BJP’s Lok Sabha candidates, he also batted for the ‘one nation, one election’ idea, and called his party “24-carat gold” and Congress “rusted iron”.
The BJP has renominated sitting MP Janardhan Mishra in the Rewa Lok Sabha seat. He will take on Congress’ Neelam Singh. In Satna, BJP sitting MP Ganesh Singh is pitted against local Congress MLA Siddharth Kushwaha.
The 29 Lok Sabha seats in MP will go to polls in four phases between April 19 and May 13 and votes will be counted on June 4. Polling will be held in Rewa and Satna seats on April 26.
“People say the BJP always talks of Hindus and Muslims. I want to say that we do not discriminate between Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Jews,” Singh asserted during his address in Rewa.
The defence minister said his party takes along with it all. “We believe all born in Bharat are the children of Bharat Mata. We don’t discriminate,” he said.
The allegations of bias against the BJP grew sharper after it declared its intention to ban triple talaq. “We did not end it (instant triple talaq) by fooling people. It was our resolve and word,” he said.
Be it Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews or Parsis, BJP treats its “sisters equally”. “Our ancient practice and that of the BJP is to respect women,” said the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister.
“After marrying someone, if anybody leaves her saying ‘talaq, talaq and talaq’, the BJP won’t tolerate it even if it loses the government. We won’t allow women to be disrespected on our soil,” he said.
Batting for the ‘one nation, one election’ idea, Singh referred to the recently held assembly elections in the MP and said, “Now after four months, they will vote again. I have also said that the country should have a ‘one nation, one election’ system. It should happen in one go,” said Singh.
After ‘one nation, one election’, local body polls should take place in the country. “But it should be held at the most in two batches,” Singh said.
Calling the track record of the Modi government at the Centre “remarkable”, Singh said it also pulled 25 crore people out of poverty, provided LPG cylinders to women under Ujjwala Yojana and took the country’s economy from 11th place to 5th place in the world.
By 2026, the Defence minister said, India’s economy will be at the third place in the world and by 2047, the country will become a developed nation. While approaching 2070, it will become the biggest power in the world, he claimed.
Singh said that during Modi’s tenure, the nation’s standing in the world has increased. The Russia-Ukraine war was stopped for four-and-a-half hours on the intervention of PM Modi for the safe exit of Indian students from there, he claimed.
He also cited India’s diplomatic victory linked with Qatar, saying eight former Indian Navy officers who were awarded capital punishment by a court there were set free after Modi requested that country’s leadership.
Singh said India has become a major force in the world in the past 10 years under Modi’s leadership and added that it now not only manufactures weapons and fighter planes but also exports them.
Later, speaking in Satna, the defence minister described the BJP as “24-carat gold” and Congress as “rusted iron”. He also asserted that Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) “was, is and will be a part of India”.
Singh said people might ask whether everyone in the saffron party was blemishless.
“I don’t want to make such a claim. But I can vouch that BJP is such a party in Hindustan that fulfils the promises in its election manifestos. That’s why I say BJP is like 24-carat gold,” he said, citing the example of Ayodhya Ram temple.
Conceding that a few in his party might not always tell the truth, he stressed, “But no one in Bharat and across the world can raise a finger at the BJP pointing at a blot.”
He called the Congress “rusted iron” and said, “They ruled for 50 years. They could have led the country to the zenith. Were 50 years less time,” he asked.
The senior BJP leader said he endured pain and hardship when he was jailed during the Emergency (imposed by former prime minister Indira Gandhi) and slammed the Congress for now talking about democracy and the Constitution.
The Modi-led Centre scrapped Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, removing its special status, in the blink of an eye, Singh claimed.
J&K is today buzzing with development and those living in PoK now feel that if anyone can improve their lives, it’s India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said.
The people of PoK might say they want to go with India’s Jammu and Kashmir. “Means, they want PoK to be (annexed) with India,” he said, adding, “As far as PoK is concerned, it was, is and will be ours.”
