Bihar BJP MLA Hari Bhushan Thakur demands withdrawal of voting rights of Muslims
Patna, Feb 26: The budget session of the Bihar assembly commenced on Friday on a stormy note, as many opposition members staged protests against a provocative statement about minorities by a ruling BJP MLA and suspected lynching of a leader of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U) by cow vigilantes.
Congress MLAs Shakeel Ahmed Khan and Rajesh Ram also boycotted Governor Phagu Chauhan's customary address to the joint session as a token of protest against the communal vitiation as evident from the two instances .
Hari Bhushan Thakur Bachaul, who represents Bisfi assembly segment, had on Thursday said that Muslims had been given a separate country at the time of Partition and those who have chosen to stay back should be stripped of voting rights and made to live as second class citizens.
Bachaul had made the outrageous remark when his attention was drawn by journalists, on the previous day, to Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM's demand for a proportional representation of the minority community in elected bodies.
The Hyderabad MP's party has five MLAs in Bihar, and state unit chief Akhtarul Iman took strong exception to the BJP legislator's comment and said he would bring the matter to the notice of Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha and demand disqualification of Bachaul.
MLAs of the Congress stood outside the assembly premises, holding placards condemning the utterances of Bachaul and killing of JD(U) leader Mohd Khalil Rizvi whose charred body was found buried recently in Samastipur district.
A video has gone viral on social media in which Rizvi can be seen being beaten up by a mob that accused him of consuming beef.
According to police, one person has been arrested in connection with the killing, and apparently, the assailants had set Rizvi's body on fire after beating him to death.
It was decided by our party that a couple of us will boycott the governor's address to highlight the deeper malaise that has got reflected in the brutal incident involving Rizvi and the brazen statement of Bachaul, Congress MLA Shakeel Ahmed Khan told PTI.
The party has 19 legislators in the 243-strong assembly.
Khan and Rajesh Ram sat in a lawn situated adjacent to the main Vidhan Sabha premises where they sang Hum honge kaamyab , the Hindi version of the song We shall overcome .
Rizvi's killers may have been caught and Bachaul may get a rap on the knuckles. But the problem has become bigger than a stray incident or two. We are living in a communally vitiated atmosphere which makes it possible for people to do or say things which were earlier unthinkable , said Khan, who was a JNU students' union president in the 1990s.
The issue of communal polarisation also led to protests by the CPI(ML) which is the third-largest constituent of the five-party Grand Alliance.
The alliance is helmed by the RJD.
The Congress had fought the assembly polls of 2020 as a part of the alliance but post its break up with the RJD, it has been left isolated with the Left choosing to move closer to the Lalu Prasad's party.
CPI(ML) MLA Sayadeo Ram, who kept shouting slogans while the governor delivered his speech, had earlier told reporters that we will not allow Bihar to get saffronised, (bhagwakaran nahin hone denge) which is the BJP's agenda and to which the JD(U) seems to have acquiesced.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
