JAIPUR l SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2020 l Pages 12 l 3.00 RNI NO. RAJENG/2019/77764 l Vol 2 l Issue No. 166
EMERGENCE OF A NEW
SECULAR
HERO ADITI NAGAR
I
n an ongoing love jihad controversy across the country, suddenly a towering Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot has emerged as a new secular hero and a single voice in the entire Congress party to counter saffron party’s ‘love jihad’ campaign. In a scathing attack on Friday eveing, Gehlot challenged BJP to stand the scrutiny of the Constitutional law on this sensitive issue in the courts. He has gone to the extent of accusing BJP, saying, “Love Jihad is a word manufactured by the BJP to divide the nation and disturb communal harmony. Marriage is a matter of personal liberty and they are putting curbs on it, which is like snatching away personal freedom. It is a ploy to disrupt communal harmony, fuel social conflict and disregard constitutional provisions like the state not discriminating against citizens on any ground.” In response to Gehlot’s charge, the union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, who hails from Gehlot’s home constituency Jodhpur, carried equal frontal attack on the chief minister by saying that love jihad is a trap that has thousands of young women believing marriage is a personal affair, where later it turns out it is not. On the lines of their chief ministerial nominee Shekhawat, for 2023 assembly election, the state BJP President Satish Poonia and deputy LoP Rajendra Rathore also joined the BJP campaign to strongly respond back to Gehlot on this crucial issue but at the end of the day, among the people of Rajasthan, Gehlot’s stand on love jihad has gone more convincing and credible. Sonia and Rahul, being away to Goa and Priyanka maintaining a steady silence over the issue, Gehlot has suo-moto acquired the status of a working President in the party, which is going to elect its next national President in the next couple of days.
CHIEF MINISTER ASHOK GEHLOT