Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma, photo courtesy of The Indian Express
Jaipur: The Vishva Hindu Parishad leader Suresh Upadhyay expressed his dissatisfaction with the BJP government in Rajasthan over its handling of alleged love jihad and land jihad cases, The Indian Express reported.
Seeking a strict law against both, VHP’s kshetriya mantri or regional minister said that he did not see much difference between the current regime led by Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma and previous Congress government in handling these cases.
Addressing a press conference in Jaipur on Wednesday, Suresh Upadhyay questioned the government’s handling of a 2024 case of alleged stone pelting at a Bevan religious procession at Jahazpur in Bhilwara while passing through a Muslim locality causing communal tension.
Suresh Upadhyay said that looking at this incident he did not find much difference after the change of government, adding that ‘they act in the way that suits them’.
‘We would expect that for both love jihad and land jihad, a strict law should be brought so that both these issues can be stopped,’ Upadhyay was quoted as saying in Hindi.
Upadhyay, however, did not question the overall working of the government, while choosing to limit his dissatisfaction to ‘love jihad’ and ‘land jihad’.
Terming ‘love jihad’ a country-wide problem involving a ‘big racket from Kashmir to Kanyakumari’, he said not a day passes without a case cropping up to his notice.
He alleged that officers of the administration with Macaulay’s education consider it as regular love affairs, not ‘love jihad’, adding that their priority is to ‘maintain peace’ whether ‘love jihad’ or ‘ land jihad’.
He accused officials of presenting a weak case in the courts in such cases and called stricter law, saying that ‘The law that is in place right now (for love jihad) is not going to work’.
Meanwhile, the Rajasthan government tabled Rajasthan Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Bill in the Budget session of the state Assembly aiming to check ‘love jihad’.