We can say with pride that we’re the champions of Constitution: BJP chief Nadda

Referring to the Constitution, Nadda declared some of the pet ideological themes espoused by his party as constitutional commitments, projecting the Congress as a party that damaged the “soul” of the Constitution. He took pride in the fact that the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir has for the first time since 1950 taken the oath of office on the Indian Constitution.

Asserting that the continuation of instant triple talaq till some years ago was against the promise of equality in the Constitution, Nadda said, “We believe in equality. So where did triple talaq come from? There is no triple talaq in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq or Indonesia. It does not exist in Islamic countries. But we were still accepting triple talaq here. It was at the time of PM Modi that it was finally removed.” On August 22, 2017, the Supreme Court banned instant triple talaq and Parliament passed a Bill to penalise it in 2019.

“The Constitution said that all states are equal and are an integral part of India. But where did this Article 370 come from? Why wasn’t it stuck off for so long? It was abrogated under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After 75 years, the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir has for the first time taken the oath on the Indian Constitution,” Nadda said, claiming that the now-repealed Article 370 was violative of the Constitution.

‘Over 75,000 of our people went to jail’

Attacking the Congress over the imposition of the Emergency, Nadda obliquely claimed credit for the Jana Sangh and the RSS for having opposed it. He said, “One party tried to damage the Constitution time and again. They have made perverse attempts to interpret the Constitution wrongly so as to damage its very soul. The Emergency was imposed for two years, and Articles 19,20,21 and 22 were suspended. There was no freedom of speech and freedom of press. More than 1.36 lakh people were detained under MISA and DIR. More than 75,000 of the people who went to jail to defend the Constitution were from our ideology. They did not even know whether they would come out of jail or not.”

The BJP president added the Congress had dismissed elected governments 90 times and had also tried to subvert the judiciary.

Lauding the Narendra Modi government for the passage of the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam to pave the path for women’s reservation in Parliament and state legislatures in future, Nadda said, “The Bill had been introduced in the Lok Sabha in 1996. But who were the people who made it wait? The Bill was passed under PM Modi and our sisters will have reservation in the next elections.”

Ambedkar’s Bharat Ratna

Nadda also accused the Congress of having been anti-Ambedkar. “They insulted Dr BR Ambedkar in his lifetime. We should read what Dr Ambedkar wrote in his resignation letter and why it was suppressed. We would know which party contested against him to stop him from coming to the Lok Sabha. Congress governments did not give him Bharat Ratna; it was a BJP-supported government that gave him this award. His photo also began to adorn Parliament after this.”

While Ambedkar was a critic of the Congress, the Jawaharlal Nehru government had included him in the first cabinet, of which Syama Prasad Mookerji, who later founded the Jana Sangh, was also a part. Years later, Ambedkar resigned from the government over resistance to the Hindu Code Bill from sections of the Opposition and the government, and the Panchjanya at a time when Atal Bihari Vajpayee worked for it, leading to Nehru delaying the passage of the Bill aimed at reforming Hindu personal laws.

Nadda said the Constituent Assembly had decided that there cannot be reservation based on religion, but added that the Congress had time and again tried to “bring it through the backdoor and deprive the SCs, STs and OBCs of their rights”.

He praised the Modi government for giving constitutional status to the OBC commission and offering 10 per cent reservation for economically weaker sections among the forward communities.

“It took 65 years for the leadership of this country to start celebrating Constitution Day. This raises a question mark on that leadership. The Samvidhan Gaurav Yatra was started in Gujarat by Narendra Modi, and after he became prime minister in 2014, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment issued a notification on November 19, 2015, that Constitution Day would be celebrated on November 26. This makes us think about what was the place of the Constitution in the minds of those in power till then,” Nadda said.

“And Congress people also said that we anyway celebrate January 26, so what’s the need to celebrate November 26? People should remember whose contribution—and which leadership’s contribution—is there in presenting the Constitution to the people in a correct manner,” the BJP president added.