Patna: As the BJP faced a setback in the recently concluded bypolls, Senior Bihar BJP leader and former deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi has downplayed Yogi Adityanath's central theme of ‘love jihad'.
Speaking to an English daily, senior Bihar BJP leader and former deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi reiterated the party line on “love jihad” but nuanced it.
The BJP, he said, is opposed to inter-religious marriages that involve “forced conversion and emotional blackmail” and will oppose all cases where it sees an “organised effort”. In many places, “now a design is visible”, he said, mentioning Kerala, Karnataka and UP.
But, “I am not in favour of using the term love jihad” and Yogi Adityanath is “not the face of the BJP”, only “one of its 40 star campaigners” for the UP bypolls, said Modi. If the Yogi had made in Bihar the kind of controversial statements he made in UP, “we would have contradicted him”, he said. “There is no Adityanath in Bihar”, said Modi, adding that the state unit of the party had “not co-opted” the Adityanath-type hardliners.
Apparently the BJP has now distanced itself from Yogi Adityanath's love jihad concept with the realization that voters are now aware and awakened.
