NEW DELHI -- A campaign to end the "unQuranic practice" of Triple Talaq is underway in several parts of the country, with over 50,000 Muslim men and women signing a petition to ban this custom of unilateral and instantaneous divorce.
The petition, initiated by the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, seeks the intervention of the National Commission for Women to end Triple Talaq.
A study conducted by the BMMA, last year, reveals that more than 92 percent of surveyed Muslim women support ending the practice of Triple Talaq, and over 91 percent of them are against polygamy.
The figure of 50,000 signatures will rise since the national campaign is continuing in several states including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh.
"So far, 50,000 signatures have been collected where women and men have endorsed abolition of Triple Talaq, many more signatures will be collected in the coming days," Zakia Soman, co-founder of BMMA, told The Times of India.
"We have written to NCW chairperson Dr Lalitha Kumaramangalam to enlist its support to this long-pending demand of Muslim women,'' she said.
Women's rights activists said that Triple Talaq is on the rise, and men are using Facebook and mobile phone texts to divorce women.
Earlier this year, Shayara Bano, a 35-year-old woman from Allahabad, moved the Supreme Court to ban Triple Talaq.
Last year, the Supreme Court also said that personal laws of different religions, which govern matters like marriage, divorce, alimony and property, were creating too many problems, and probed the Modi government about introducing a Uniform Civil Code in India.
In their ruling on October 16, Justices Anil R. Dave and Adarsh Kumar Goel asked that a Public Interest Litigation be registered to examine whether "discrimination" suffered by women under Islamic laws violates fundamental rights under Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Indian Constitution and international conventions.
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