SP, BSP oppose triple talaq bill, but BSP skips voting

Saying that Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad talked of “women empowerment, gender equality”, SP member Javed Ali Khan said the scope of the Bill was restricted. “There are some women in this country who have been abandoned by their husbands… it includes some famous people too,” he said, and asked the government if it planned to bring a law to punish such husbands.

Accusing the government of a “hidden agenda” to “score a point”, he said the Bill was less about law and more about politics. He also asked about the status of the Group of Ministers set up in October 2018 to look into the issue of sexual harassment and women empowerment.

Marriage, he said, was a civil contract, and the “specialty of civil contract is that one can opt out of it”, and its criminalisation is “not well-intentioned”.

Read | Medieval practice confined to dustbin of history: PM Modi on triple talaq bill passage

Opposing the Bill, BSP member Satish Chandra Mishra said it should be sent to a select committee. “It is being said that the Bill is in favour of women, which is totally wrong,” he said. “It is a void action, about which the Supreme Court has said that if this action happens, if someone says talaq, then it is invalid and void,” he said. With this Bill, the government is bringing a “non-existent thing into existence”.

He said the Law Minister must explain if there is some other intention behind the Bill, as it is the “first time” that a law is being made for a “void action”.

However, while some of the SP members were present at the time of voting, none of the BSP members were there.