The Congress on Thursday alleged that Narendra Modi government is not serious of getting the triple talaq bill passed in Rajya Sabha and was running from debate, and its only policy was to “divide the society”.

Noting that the established tradition of Rajya Sabha is if any motion is left unfinished, it is taken up the next day for discussion from there, party leader Pramod Tiwari said: “When the House got adjourned yesterday (Wednesday), all the 18 opposition parties including Congress were demanding that there be voting on sending the bill to the Select Committee.”

“Today they (the government) should have started the proceedings with triple talaq. They did not do it. BJP has neither the policy nor the intention to get the triple talaq bill passed in Parliament,” he told reporters here.

Tiwari said even BJP’s allies like the AIADMK, the Telugu Desam Party and other independent parties like the Biju Janata Dal and the Indian National Lok Dal are not with them on the issue.

The deadlock on the triple talaq bill in the Rajya Sabha continued on Thursday with the government rejecting the opposition’s insistence on sending the bill to a Select Committee for detailed scrutiny.

With no agreement, the government placed the bill in the bottom in the list of business, which the opposition strongly objected to and demanded that its motions for referring the bill to a Select Committee be taken up immediately.

Senior Congress leader P. L. Punia alleged that the BJP and the RSS ignited violence in Maharashtra’s Pune district on January 1.

“The Maharashtra government failed to control the violence there. We demand immediate arrest of the two accused named in the FIR for allegedly instigating violence in Pune,” he said, asking why the government was protecting the accused linked to Hindutva outfits.

“We demand legal action against those who were trying to disturb harmony,” he said, adding that the violence was spreading to other states like Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.