Millat Times
New Delhi
Popular Front of India Chairman E. Abubacker in his statement has called the new Triple Talaq Bill passed in the Parliament an unconstitutional move to interfere in Personal Law.
The Bill was drafted without any sort of discussions or consultations with the affected parties, Muslim women’s organizations, bodies representing the Muslim community. Even the request by the President of All India Muslim Personal Law Board to the Prime Minister was not taken into account. Such a blatant rejection of an appeal from the largest body representing all the different sections of the Muslim community in the country is suggestive of the disdainful attitude of Narendra Modi towards minorities.
The claim that the Bill is about protecting the rights of marriage of Muslim women is devoid of any substance since the opinion of Muslim women had hardly been ever taken into account. Tripple Talaq is an issue affecting a tiny percentage of Muslim women. Even then, sending the men involved such cases to jail, instead of solving the problem, only intensifies the suffering of the victims and their children. It is, therefore, safe to say that this is an anti-women Bill.
The recent Supreme Court judgment which had struck down Triple Talaq and made it ‘nonlegal’ was by and large most effective step towards solving the issue. The proponents of the Bill are bound to explain how an act becomes punishable offence when it is legally nonexistent in the first place. By the decision to pass a Bill against Triple Talaq in the Parliament making it a punishable offence, Government is blowing the issue out of proportion for political gains. It simply looks like another reason to send Muslim men to jail and an attempt to demonize Muslim community and their bodies.
Now the Bill has been passed by a house where Muslim community, let alone Muslim women, is massively underrepresented. The swift move to get the bill passed has ulterior motives other than what is being claimed. Muslim community understands well that the present Bill has to do more with opening the door for interfering in Personal Laws and tampering with fundamental rights than protecting the rights of Muslim women. The secular forces who are supporting the Bill only looking at its superficial language of equality and gender justice and disregarding the voices of the community are actually helping the alienation of the community
