JOIN USThe fatwa of Jama Masjid Shahi Imam Syed Ahmed Bukhari asking Muslims to vote for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), provoked union finance minister Arun Jaitley on Friday to retort that such decrees will not work against the BJP.
The “correct answer is through the ballot,” he said a day before polling in the Delhi Assembly election.
Jaitley, sharing the dais with the party’s Delhi CM candidate Kiran Bedi, union minister Nirmala Sitharaman, state incharge Prabhat Jha, among others, recalled that even in Gujarat election he was asked to react to fatwas issued by Muslim clerics. Even then he had replied that “the correct answer to such fatwas is through the ballot. People who are opposed to it should come out to vote hundred per cent”.
Party chief spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain charged the AAP with trying to divide the capital on communal lines for gaining mileage in the polls. Nirmala Sitharaman remarked: “They asked for support, and they got support. What does it mean to say now that they don't want support".
After Bukhari’s byte announcing that he was supporting the AAP, the party leaders denounced the Muslim cleric’s fatwa saying that they do not indulge in such politics. But the union commerce minister tried to punch holes in AAP’s stand and demanded an explanation for their presence on Thursday at a protest organised by a particular community, hinting at Muslims’ demonstration.
"It shows they are doing politics of religion. Who is the beneficiary of the 'fatwa', it is the AAP," she countered.
Bukhari is known for issuing fatwas asking Muslims to support different political parties before parliamentary or assembly polls. In the run up to the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, Bukhari had issued a decree in favour of the then ruling party BJP, which eventually lost the polls paving the way for UPA’s decade-long reign.
When asked to comment on actor-turned MP Shatrughan Sinha’s praise of Arvind Kejriwal, finance minister Jaitley said a leader’s statement should not be generalised to give the impression of a larger problem in the party.
“Let’s not hair-split one statement,” he said. To another question on party’s prospects in the assembly polls being marred by internal sabotage, Jaitley shot back asking for a “list of people who won’t sabotage BJP’s elections”.