BJP backed 2013 Waqf amendment, says Sandeep Varier citing video

Palakkad: Sandeep G Varier, who left the BJP and joined the Congress recently in Kerala, exposed the BJP's double standards in the controversial Waqf Amendment Bill. The new amendment bill is being brought on the grounds that the Waqf Amendment Bill brought by the second UPA government in 2013 was a Muslim appeasement by Congress. However, Varier points out that in a video the BJP, which supported the bill at that time, had demanded that even government buildings standing on Waqf lands should be evacuated. Explaining BJP’s position then on Waqf lands, the video shows BJP leader Shanawaz Hussain telling the Parliament the same during a debate on the bill that year.

In a post on Facebook, where he also shared the video, Varier said that the BJP is now playing the politics of division to divide the people into Hindus, Muslims and Christians, which is never good for our country. He mocked that the BJP itself has uploaded the entire speech of Shahnawaz Hussain on YouTube and that BJP sympathisers who do not know Hindi should ask K Surendran, Kerala BJP president, to translate it for them.

In 2015, Surendran had made serious errors translating the Hindi speech by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Malayalam. Modi was visiting Kerala for the first time after taking office as the PM in 2014.

Varier accused the BJP of double standards in the case of the Waqf Amendment Bill, citing the 2013 video. He pointed out that in the video Shahnawaz Hussain says that BJP also supports the 1995 amendment of the Waqf law. In the video, the BJP leader also suggests that the 2013 amendment should have come much earlier, but now the saffron party is saying that 2013 amendment was Congress’s Muslim appeasement policy, Varier said. He also stated that what must be remembered is that it was the BJP who argued strongly for the 2013 amendment.