Commenting on the recent controversy over in the state over the singing of the Vande Mataram, former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat said on Friday that if the Bharatiya Janata Party was so concerned about the matter, it should enact a law to make singing of the song three times a day compulsory, ANI reported.

“Why are they [the BJP] trying to create a division in the country? They should just focus on the work that has been assigned to them. If they are so concerned about this, they should just make it compulsory to sing the national song and anthem thrice a day everywhere, in schools, colleges, organisations. Who is stopping them?” the news agency quoted him as saying.

The controversy broke out after Uttarakhand Education Minister Dhan Singh Rawat had on April 7 said that everyone should sing the Vande Mataram if they wanted to remain in the state. Reacting to this, Uttarakhand Congress Chief Kishore Upadhyay had said on Thursday that the song would not be played at any of the party’s events in the state for a month, “come what may”. “They [the BJP] cannot impose things like that on people. I announce that we will not sing the Vande Mataram at our programmes for one month, come what may,” Upadhyay had said.

Clarifying Congress’s stand on the matter, Harish Rawat said that the party was “wedded to the Vande Mataram”. “For us, the Vande Mataram is an eminent page of the glorious freedom struggle of India. The BJP, which does not have any connection with the freedom struggle, is giving us lessons on the same, just to prove itself patriotic and to create polarisation,” he said.

Uttarakhand is not the only state where a debate over the song has been raging. Earlier, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath had also criticised those who refused to sing the song, saying that it reflected their “narrow-mindedness”. He made the comment after Meerut Mayor Harikant Ahluwalia did not allow seven Muslim members of the city’s Municipal Corporation to sing the song during a meeting on March 28. Following that, Allahabad’s civic body, too, tried to introduce a rule to make the song compulsory at meetings, but the Samajwadi Party objected to it, saying that some verses in the song were against Islamic beliefs.

Earlier in February, the Supreme Court had rejected a plea filed by senior Supreme Court advocate Ashwini Upadhyay seeking direction to give equal respect to the Vande Mataram as is given to the National Anthem.