On Tuesday, a senior SP leader requested the EC to ban removing the Burqa of Muslim women at polling booths.
Submitting a letter, leader Shyam Lal Pal said that the electoral process must not discourage them to reach voting sites and deployed officers should not be permitted to degrade their modesty or intimidate them, however despite these endeavors Muslim women reportedly confronted targeted attacks during UP by-polls.
Requesting the CEO to issue new guidelines for officers, DMs, police, law enforcement and other present authorities, the leader asked booth employees to not to panic or bully veiled women. This step came as a reply to the ongoing anti-minority tendencies during elections which intend to smash voting rights.
“Many SP supporters, especially Muslim women, left polling stations without voting due to the discomfort and intimidation they faced” he jotted down in his letter, stating that “no police official have the authority to verify voter IDs of burqa-clad women” because it makes them uncomfortable and eventually affects the voters’ turnout.
Pal clarified that the deep-seated communalism within the balloting procedure had also harmed Lok Sabha elections but BJP and its allies have been criticizing his remarks.
BJP’s Mukhtar Abbas accused it as a policy of religious divide and insulted Pal by calling him a “pseudo secular voice”, on the other hand, RJD leader Manoj Kumar Jha attacked the “differentiation” politics of PM Modi and asked him to treat everyone equally.
Targeted Harassments At Polling Booths
The reasons mentioned in Pal’s memo were not wrong as Muslim voters have again witnessed sheer autocracy by the government and administration during by-polls. Muslims are being sidelined despite having all mandatory documentations, while women have confronted sexist slurs and shocking verbal harassment.
In Kulhedi village of Meerapur, police prohibited the entry of Muslim women at booths and baffled them by inquiring about various identity cards on November 20. Similarly, in Seesamau assembly, police abused Niqabi women.
“The police are teasing women voters with vulgarity and asking them to go back if they wish to save their dignity!”, said SP Media cell.
Responding to Pal’s letter, BJP’s Akhilesh Kumar Awasthi said that cops should check burqa-clad women while opposition leaders encouraged women to cast their votes at all costs even if the appointed authorities stop them.
Paving another hate-conspiracy, NDA’s Mithlesh Pal compromised their voting rights by addressing them as fake and proxy voters who “had been nabbed with weapons at madrassas and mosques”.
Burqa Hullabaloo To Affect Voting Behaviors
In the name of identification, BJP has been targeting the political existence of Indian Muslim women, claiming them to be outsiders even when they carry every necessary documentation with them.
This year the EC also presented the roadmap of “Pardanasheen Polling Stations” during the Lok Sabha referendum to resolve the issue in urban areas under supervision of women staff. These polling sites were planned to protect Niqabposh (veiled) Muslim voters from inconvenience and bigotry, but any such management was not visible during current by-polls, and Muslim women were exposed to violence and were sidelined and denied their voting rights for no reason.
