BJP using 'triple talaq' issue for electoral gains: NCP

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Tuesday hit back at the comment made by Union Textile Minister Smriti Zubin Irani on triple talaq, alleging that the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) is trying to give the issue a communal angle for electoral gain in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.

"As the UP elections are approaching and they have raised this issue deliberately to gain electoral gain. They always put forth religious angle so that to increase communal tensions as they believe it is the easiest and shortest way for electoral gain," NCP leader Tariq Anwar told ANI.

He added that BJP leaders never talk on main issues like farmers distress, unemployment, corruption and poverty.

Irani, who is in the midst of campaigning for the party's candidates in the forthcoming assembly elections, challenged Samajwadi Party leader and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's wife Dimple Yadav, and Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi, who is expected to campaign for her party's candidates, to speak up on triple talaq row instead of maintaining a stoic silence on this pressing issue that affects the welfare of Muslim women.

Speaking to the media, Irani said that not just Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh should clear their parties' stand on the issue, even the women leaders there should also come out and discuss the issue so that a better and lasting solution to the problem could be found.

Both Congress and Samajwadi Party expect a large part of the Muslim community to vote for them and they have not cleared their stance on the issue of women's rights, especially on triple talaq, providing the BJP with an issue to corner them.