"BJP Harassing Opposition Using Agencies": Trinamool's Shatrughan Sinha

 Trinamool Congress MP Shatrughan Sinha on Friday slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government for harassing the opposition using central agencies and claimed that it its their "desperate attempt for revenge."

"Some people are there, and some agencies that are there are not doing the right thing; they are trying unsuccessfully to harass many people, especially the opposition," Shatrughan Sinha said.

Earlier in the day, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) summoned TMC youth president Saayoni Ghosh in the case of the Bengal teacher recruitment scam on Friday.

TMC youth president Saayoni Ghosh was grilled by the ED for 11 hours.

Lashing out at the BJP, he said that it is a desperate attempt to take revenge before they go out of power.

"It is a desperate attempt for revenge; as the lamp flickers before extinguishing, the same condition exists for the BJP," he said.

The MP further said that the BJP has brought up the issue of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) as the election is near in order to divert the people's attention from important issues like unemployment and inflation.

"You could not pass the women's reservation Bill. Suddenly, you are talking about UCC at the time of the election. You are doing all these things to divert attention from unemployment and inflation," said TMC MP Shatrughan Sinha.

The concept of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) has been a topic of discussion for the past four years, and it has once again come into focus following the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks ahead of the elections in Madhya Pradesh.

The Opposition reacted by calling it a " vote bank" politics.

PM Modi said that the country cannot run on two laws and that Uniform Civil Code was part of the Constitution."Today people are being instigated in the name of UCC. How can the country run on two (laws)? The Constitution also talks of equal rights...Supreme Court has also asked to implement UCC. These (Opposition) people are playing vote bank politics," he said.

Referring to the failure of succeeding governments to "secure" the UCC for its citizens despite the codification of the Hindu law in 1956, a Division Bench of the Supreme Court in 2019 had told the state to "endeavour" and bring the common code. The court had said that "despite the exhortations of this court in the case of Shah Bano in 1985, the government has done nothing to bring the Uniform Civil Code".

PM's statement triggered a nationwide debate as several opposition leaders have accused PM Modi of raising the UCC issue for political gains ahead of the upcoming elections.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)