Hyderabad: MIM president and Hyderabad Member of Parliament Asaduddin Owaisi on Thursday strongly opposed the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights and Marriage) Bill (Triple Talaq Bill) in Parliament, stating that this will be injustice to Muslim women.
Speaking after law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad tabled the Bill, Mr Owaisi questioned the need to formulate a new law when the existing law on domestic violence tackles the issues.
The Hyderabad MP also objected to the penal provisions in the law.
“The Union law minister has failed to discriminate between civil law and criminal law. Not a single Muslim country has a penal provision. Triple talaq is verbal and emotional abuse,” he explained.
Law minister is a poor drafter of law, says Asaduddin Owaisi
He called law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad a poor drafter of law because he failed to distinguish between civil law and criminal law. “In Section 3, the law minister accepts that triple talaq will be void, then how can you punish him (the husband)? Something which is void cannot be punished as it has no legal force,” he said.
He said the law minister has quoted Pakistan, but Section 61 of the Pakistan law has been stayed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan and no Muslim country has a penal provision.
Mr Owaisi said that if the BJP was so concerned about women’s welfare, why does it not have a single Muslim woman MP?
Referring to the argument of the government in the Supreme Court that all talaqs must be abolished, Mr Owaisi said that the government is trying to do away with Muslim personal laws.
He said that he had given notice to the Lok Sabha under Rule 72 and his primary objection is that Parliament lacks legislative competence because it violates Arti-cle 15 of the Constitution (fundamental rights) and triple talaq has been declared null and void already by the Supreme Court.
Maintaining that the Bill lacks rationality as sections under the IPC exists, he citied that the Apex Court’s verdict in E.P. Royappa’s case (an IAS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre) to argue that the Bill is constitutionally not valid.
“The minister has brought in a bad law. If a Muslim man says triple talaq, then how is it valid when the court has done away with it? This law will give handle to Muslim men to further subjugate women,” Mr Owaisi argued.
He said “the government wants to achieve its dream of putting Muslims behind bars. Instead, create a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore for Muslim women.”
He said “Your dream of having more Muslims in jail will be achieved. Please send the bill to the Standing Committee.”
In an apparent reference to PM Narendra Modi’s wife, he said, justice should be done to “20 lakh abandoned women” from all religions, including “our bhabhi in Gujarat”.
