On April 24th 2019, BJP fielded popular Sufi singer Hans Raj Hans from the North-West Delhi seat for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Since Delhi is being bitterly fought between AAP and BJP, AAP was bound to lash out at the candidate. However, one did not expect AAP to resort to quoting Pakistan media to target Hans Raj Hans. Today, AAP has claimed that Hans Raj Hans’ nomination from the reserved seat should be cancelled since he had in 2014, converted to Islam.
Hans Raj Hans accepted Islam in 2014, ineligible to contest from reserved North West Delhi seat, claims AAPhttps://t.co/hFdpTGHErW
— ABP News (@abpnewstv) May 2, 2019
“As per the guidelines of the Election Commission, North West Delhi is a reserved seat. But BJP’s candidate Hans Raj Hans does not come from the reserved category as he converted to Islam on February 20, 2014. He deliberately concealed this information from the EC. This is a complete violation of EC rules,” AAP said.
Even the irrelevant Twitter Chief Minister of Delhi chimed in.
Hans Raj Hans is ineligible to fight from a reserved seat. He will finally be declared ineligible. Voters from North West Delhi shud not waste their votes on him. https://t.co/elwnhNuDte
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) May 2, 2019
To make this claim, AAP asserted that several media houses had covered the news of Hans Raj Hans converting to Islam back in 2014.
The fact is, that in 2014, several Pakistani news portals ‘Pakistan Affairs’, ‘U News TV’ and Pakistan leaning Indian-in-name portals like Caravan had claimed that Hans, who had been studying Islamic literature for many days, developed faith in the values of Islam in the process and adopted the religion.
The reports added that Hans has also changed his name to Mohammad Yusuf. However, he would keep working under the original name in the music industry.
These reports were, however, proven false. Yuvraj Hans, son of Hans Raj Hans had denied the reports from Pakistan of his father converting to Islam and called these speculations just a rumour.
Hindustan Times quoted Yuvraj as saying, “Our family was completely disturbed after we came to know of the report by online news Pakistani portal and a TV channel that my father had converted his religion in Lahore. I was shooting at that time. I called up my father and he, too, was stunned at the news. We did not know how the footage got spread and who is behind this.”
He added that the family was going to investigate the matter and his father would fix a meeting with the Pakistani media house soon.
It is rather unfortunate that AAP has resorted to peddling Pakistani propaganda to belittle the singer turned politician. However, this shouldn’t come as surprise considering Arvind Kejriwal has often become the star of Pakistan because his utterances help their propaganda.
Arvind Kejriwal has received massive support from Pakistan after the surgical strikes when he had toed the Pakistan propaganda line. In fact, #IStandWithKejriwal had trended in Pakistan. Perhaps after the warm support that Kejriwal got from Pakistan, when AAP says “media” it by default means the Pakistani media and not the Indian media.
