BJP faces flak over Yogi Adityanath as UP poll campaigner
Yogi has been made one of the three leaders in charge of UP campaign, the other two being union minister Kalraj Mishra and BJP UP chief f Laxmikant Bajpayee.
Elections to 11 assembly seats would be held on Sept 13.
In the controversial video, Yogi, who role as campaigner has been assigned by BJP president Amit Shah, was seen addressing a gathering in and undated video (could be 2007) where he said: "If one Hindu girl is converted, we will convert 100 Muslim girls."
He was seen exhorting the gathering to holler that if one Hindu is killed, 100 from another community will be killed.
Yogi told media channels that it was a cut and paste video.
The BJP has expressed concern over Hindu women being targetted by alleged Muslim men and their alleged forced conversion.
Yogi told NDTV channel that they "won't tolerate what's happening to Hindu women in the name of love jihad".
It is alleged that the saffron group comprising BJP and its ideological patron Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has made the term "love jihad" as the cornerstone of poll campaign in UP, which witnessed a series of communal clashes and deaths in violence between two communities.
Interestingly the term also found mention in Wikipedia where it is defined as "an alleged activity under which young Muslim boys and men reportedly target young girls belonging to non-Muslim communities for conversion to Islam by feigning love." The term has been used to describe the activity in India, while similar activities have been reported in places like the United Kingdom besides in the past from Kerala and Karnataka.
Things also reached a flashpoint after a Meerut woman, a teacher, alleged recently that she was abducted by Muslim men, kept confined in a madrasa and raped and then was pressurised to convert till she escaped from there.
BJP MP Yogi Adityanath was also vocal in Parliament during the communal violence bill debate where he raised the plight of Kashmiri Pandits who were displaced from their homes and accused Congress of working in Pakistan agenda.
Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons
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