MUMBAI: Maharashtra Congress president Harshvardhan Sapkal slammed the BJP for crying crocodile tears, stating that the saffron party has no moral right to talk about women's rights and that it must first burn 'Bunch of Thoughts' and 'Manusmriti' before defending the women's reservation bill.
Sapkal said that if the BJP has courage, then they should immediately ask the current RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat to step down, appoint any eligible woman as RSS chief and show the world that they respect women.
He claimed that the BJP has a hidden agenda of dividing the country through its constitutional amendment of delimitation and that they were exposed when they were trying to push the women's reservation bill, which was not their first priority in reality.
"Therefore, the BJP has no right to talk about women's reservation," Sapkal said.
Sapkal pointed out that the BJP's ideological thinking is based on MS Golwalkar's controversial book, the 'Bunch of Thoughts' and the 'Manusmriti', both books which demean the women and propagate caste hierarchy.
"When social reformer and girl education activist champion Savitribai Phule started the first school for girls, who were the dogmatic people that pelted stones and cow dung at her? Savitribai was tortured by these so-called dogmatic and myopic religious leaders, and the same people are ideologues of the BJP," Congress leader claimed.
He said that the Women's Reservation Bill was passed in Parliament in 2023 with the support of all parties, while the bill that was introduced in the Lok Sabha on April 16 was for delimitation.
Through this bill, the BJP wanted to divide the country. "Opposition understood the evil mind and conspiracy of dividing the country, and we prevented the BJP from passing this divisive bill. The Congress was the first party to implement the 33 per cent reservation to women in local bodies, and later it was increased to 50 per cent. BJP should stop doing politics in the name of women's reservation," Sapkal said.