Politics

BJP should run from workers’ contributions, not donations from money bags: Amit Shah

Shah

New Delhi | Pitching for “purity” in poll funding, BJP president Amit Shah on Monday said the party must run with contributions from its workers and not on donations of “money bags, builders, contractors and those with black money”.

Addressing a party event to mark the 51st death anniversary of its ideological guide Deen Dayal Upadhyay, Shah said the BJP should take up the responsibility of guiding other parties on the path of probity. Two workers from each booth in the country should contribute Rs 1,000 through the NaMo app, he said. “BJP workers should say with pride that we run this party from our money and no industrialist, contractor, money bag or builder can run it,” Shah said.

He, however, added that as party president he cannot say the BJP can fund all its organisational and election expenses from its workers’ contributions. “This is not possible today,” he said. “If means are not pure, then our goals cannot be attained in a good way. If the party has to be kept pure… If the party starts running from the money of money bags, builders, contractors, those with black money, then it will malign our means to realise our goals,” he said.

There should be a public discussion on how election expenses can be brought down and how to bring probity in poll funding, he said, expressing confidence that such an exercise will begin under the BJP’s leadership.

The Modi government, he asserted, has taken steps to clamp down on the influence of black money in politics by limiting cash donations to Rs 2,000. Laws against corruption have been made so stringent that those breaking it will be caught and that those who were involved in scams are sweating even in this Delhi winter, he said.

Fugitive businessmen Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi had escaped the country because the Modi government started putting accused like them behind bars, he claimed.

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SC allows NGO to withdraw curative plea against verdict recriminalising consensual gay sex

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New Delhi | The Supreme Court on Monday allowed NGO Naz Foundation Trust to withdraw its curative plea challenging the apex court’s 2013 verdict that had again criminalised gay sex between two consenting adults.

A bench headed comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Sanjiv Khanna considered the plea of the NGO that its curative plea has now become infructuous in view of the five-judge constitution bench verdict in 2018 which had set aside the 2013 judgement.

The trust, which had first knocked doors of the Delhi High Court with its plea in 2001, seeking decriminalising of the consensual sexual act, had filed the curative petition. After the 2013 verdict, the Supreme Court had dismissed the review plea that had laid the foundation to file the curative petition.

However, a five-judge constitution bench headed by then Chief Justice Dipak Misra entertained fresh petitions seeking decriminalising of the consensual gay sex. The NGO said that the 2018 judgement had already set aside the earlier one, and hence it be allowed to take back its curative petition. The apex court allowed it.

A five-judge bench had on September 6 last year unanimously struck down part of the British-era law and held that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that criminalised consensual gay sex was “irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary”.

The bench had held that the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) community possess the same constitutional rights as any other citizen and part of Section 377, which prohibits sexual relationship between consenting adults of the same sex, is violative of the right to equality and the right to live with dignity.

The court referred to its 2013 verdict and said that upholding the validity of Section 377 on the ground that LGBTs comprised a minuscule fraction of the total population was constitutionally “impermissible” and the law was being misused.

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