Sitaram Yechury slams inclusion of 'love jihad' in BJP's Uttar Pradesh meeting agenda

Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Sitaram Yechury on Saturday termed the Bharatiya Janata Party's reported move to include controversial topics on its agenda during the two-day state executive committee meeting in Uttar Pradesh as highly 'unconstitutional'.

Commenting on the reported issues of 'love jihad' and conversion of Hindus being included in the BJP's state meeting in Uttar Pradesh, Yechury told ANI, "The point is the Constitution provides explicitly the right for everybody to choose their religion, propagate their religion. If any individual so desires… from embracing some other religion or no religion and turning into an atheist, these are all constitutional guaranteed rights."

"Anything that is done in order to deny or negate these rights is unconstitutional, so…. this cannot be allowed. The law enforcing authorities, the constitutional upholding authorities will have to intervene with the required alacrity," he added.

Yechury alleged that the BJP is the political arm of the RSS.

"The BJP is nothing else but the political arm of the RSS. The BJP is including this with a clear objective of sharpening communal polarisation .Their objective is through sharpening polarisation they want to consolidate their vote bank and this is the worst form of vote bank politics," he said.

According to reports, the above two controversial issues have been included in the BJP's meeting in Uttar Pradesh after an RSS outfit called Dharma Jagran Manch launched a campaign against 'love jihad', which refers to Hindu girls being allegedly converted to Islam for marriage, in Uttar Pradesh.