New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party’s Minority Morcha head Jamal Siddiqui said the party’s decision to suspend national spokesperson Nupur Sharma and expel the party’s Delhi spokesperson Naveen Kumar Jindal over their controversial comments on Prophet Mohammed will stop people from stepping over the party line.
“This adds to Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi’s vision of development-based politics,” he told ThePrint. “BJP is a party with a difference and [this] proves it,” he said.
Sharma has been suspended pending inquiry. The development came shortly after the BJP issued a statement denouncing insult to any religious personality.
The two leaders had made the statements during a debate on the Gyanvapi Mosque dispute on Times Now on 27 May and sparked a backlash and anti-India boycott calls on Twitter from the Arab world, including from the likes of the Grand Mufti of Oman.
Siddiqui told ThePrint that he was “satisfied with this action that the BJP has taken against such people who spread hatred”.
He said that the morcha had taken it up with the party’s central leadership when the controversy first broke out.
“We had told the leadership that Muslims are hurt, [and that] this is not BJP’s culture,” he said.
“There is no one owner in the party. Democratic decisions take time”, he said when asked if the decision came a little too late.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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