Activists of the hardline AIMIM party today staged a demonstration in the city to protest against UP minister Swami Prasad Maurya's controversial comments on 'triple talaq' and burnt his effigy.
Led by AIMIM's district president Chaudhary Ibrahim and its city unit chief Afsar Mahmood, hundreds of agitators gathered in the heart of the city and raised slogans against the minister who, while defending the BJP's stand on triple talaq, had said that those taking recourse to the regressive social practice "change their wives to satisfy their lust".
Torching the effigy of Maurya, the agitators said the minister's statement in Basti district on Friday was "mean, shameful, deplorable and an affront to Sharia law".
Led by the Owaisi brothers from Hyderabad, the AIMIM had made its debut in Uttar Pradesh in the recent assembly polls.
However, it failed to make a mark in any of the seats it had contested and got a measly 0.2 per cent of the total number of votes polled.
Maurya, who holds the Labour portfolio in the Yogi Adityanath Cabinet, is a powerful OBC leader who quit the Mayawati-led BSP last year and later joined the BJP.
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