Arun Jaitley reminds Rahul Gandhi about his father's "monumental mistake" on Triple Talaq

BJP leader and union minister Arun Jaitley today reminded Rahul Gandhi of his father's monumental mistake on triple talaq and said that Bareilly “Nikah-Halala” type incidents, which shook conscience of people, ought to be made unconstitutional.

"The late Rajiv Gandhi committed a monumental mistake in legislatively overturning the Shah Bano judgment of the Supreme Court which guaranteed maintenance to all muslim women. He allowed deserted women to be driven to poverty and destitution. Thirty-two years later his son has taken another retrograde step to drive them not merely into destitution but also to live a life which is an antithesis of human existence," Jaitley wrote in a Facebook blog post.

Jaitley's statement came amid reports of a woman, who was divorced twice by her husband in Bareilly, was forced to undergo nikah-halala as per the Islamic law - on first occasion with her father-in-law and on the subsequent occasion with her brother-in-law.


Under nikah-halala, a man cannot remarry his former wife unless she marries another man, consummates the marriage, gets a divorce and observes a period of separation period called 'iddat'.

“Unfortunately, when human conscience should have been repelled while reading this news in the morning newspapers; the AICC President Rahul Gandhi and his coterie, while addressing a minority convention, promised to withdraw the bill pending in Parliament, penalising Triple Talaq,” Jaitley said in the Facebook post titled ‘Does the Bareilly “Nikah-Halala” not shock your conscience?'

“Votes are important, so is fairness. Political opportunists only look at the next day's headlines. Nation-builders look at the next century.”

His comments came after Congress' women wing chief Sushmita Dev promised to scrap the law banning triple talaq if the party comes to power in the general elections.