NEW DELHI: Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition in Lok Sabha, accused PM Modi of lying about him being against reservation, saying the INDIA bloc wants to increase quota beyond the 50 per cent cap.
Speaking in poll-bound Jharkhand on Monday, the Congress leader said the “election is the election of ideologies” and that his party was up for “protecting the Constitution“.
“This election is an election of ideologies. On one side is the INDIA alliance which is protecting the Constitution and wants to run a government of the poor and the tribals. On the other side are those forces which want to crush the Constitution,” Rahul Gandhi said in Ranchi, according to news agency ANI.
The Gandhi scion also promised that the ruling INDIA bloc would “increase the ST reservation from 26% to 28%, SC reservation from 10% to 12% and OBC reservation from 14% to 27%…”.
Last week, PM Modi targeted the Congress by highlighting the party’s election advertisement issued for its 1991 Lok Sabha campaign slamming the reservation regime where people’s destiny was decided by caste and not by merit.
PM Modi cited the advertisement to claim that Congress’s current pitch for caste census and for raising the ceiling on quota was an opportunistic switch.
“There was a time when Congress was in power from panchayat to Parliament… then none dared to talk about quota and Congress used to suppress those who demanded it. From Jawaharlal Nehru to Rahul Gandhi, all had opposed reservation in govt jobs. For years, Dalit and Adivasi society was divided until they got the identity as SC and SC. Even OBC people got their due only in 1990,” PM Moid had said.
Rahul Gandhi further said: “Senior leaders of the BJP and the RSS have said that they want to change the Constitution. We have said that we will conduct a caste census and remove the 50 per cent reservation limit.”
He said the INDIA bloc wants to “run the government for poor and for not billionaires”, alleging that the BJP is “handing over mines, forests, land in Jharkhand to capitalists”, in an apparent reference to industrialist Gautam Adani, who the Congress leader claims gets undue benefits by the PM Modi-led central government.
Jharkhand has completed voting for the first phase of its Assembly elections, covering 43 out of 81 seats.
The remaining 38 seats, alongside Maharashtra’s 288 constituencies, will go to the polls on November 20. The counting of votes for both states is scheduled for November 23.