At the time when the Supreme Court judgment, awarding maintenance to the 74-year old Shah Bano, was being vociferously opposed on the streets by many Muslim organisations, our Party strongly defended the judgment and the rights of divorced Muslim women.  Inside parliament, our MPs including the late Saifuddin Chowdhury made strong and eloquent interventions on the issue.  AIDWA organised a procession of more than 2000 Muslim women from all over the country demanding that the Supreme Court judgment be honoured.  An AIDWA delegation met the then prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and handed over a

Leaders of the six Left parties –  Sitaram Yechury, Prakash Karat and S Ramachandran Pillai – CPI(M), Sudhakar Reddy, Gurudas Dasgupta and D Raja – CPI, Swapan Mukherjee – CPI(ML)-Liberation, Abani Roy – RSP,  Pran Sharma – SUCI(C) and Debabrata Biswas (AIFB) met in New Delhi on February 19. They have issued the following statement.