The Ram temple and the triple talaq should not be turned into election issues, Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party said on Sunday.

Days earlier, another BJP ally, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United, had said it would not vote for the triple talaq bill in the Rajya Sabha and that such issues should be resolved through talks.

“Issues like the Ram temple and the triple talaq should not be made into election issues,” Ram Vilas’s son and Jamui MP Chirag Paswan told journalists at his Patna home.

“We had contested the 2014 elections together on the plank of development, which should remain the main issue when we go to the polls this time too,” Chirag said.

“We are concerned because these issues (temple, talaq and the like) remained forgotten for three or four years even though they (the BJP) had governments at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh. Now, at the time of elections, the same issues have begun taking the centre-stage.”

Reminded that in the Lok Sabha, his party had voted in favour of the bill that looks to criminalise the instant triple talaq, Chirag said the LJP believed in expressing its stand in Parliament but was against turning such matters into election planks.

“We have repeatedly said that the LJP stands for following the court order on the Ram temple, but it never means that it should be an election issue,” he added.

In response, BJP leader Syed Shahnawaz Hussain said: “For us the Ram temple is not an election issue but one related to the faith of crores of Indians. The triple talaq is related to gender justice.”