Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi doubled down on his allegation that the Congress, if elected to power, will redistribute the country's wealth among Muslims, he found a backer in Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who said that while the Congress focuses “only on one community,” the BJP focuses “on all the communities.”
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“It is on record that the Congress party has said that the first right of the resources of the nation lies with one community. Are we not taxpayers? Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, and OBCs of this country are not taxpayers?” Sarma, an ex-Congressman, told ANI on Monday, a day after PM Modi's controversial speech in Rajasthan.
The Prime Minister, while attacking the grand old party's manifesto for the ongoing Lok Sabha polls, had invoked a contentious December 2006 statement by his predecessor, Dr Manmohan Singh, who is from the Congress.
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Sarma, meanwhile, further stated that unlike its arch-rival, the BJP considers that the “first right of the resources of this country lies with the youth, women, SC, ST, farmers, and hard-working and toiling masses.”
{{/usCountry}}Sarma, meanwhile, further stated that unlike its arch-rival, the BJP considers that the “first right of the resources of this country lies with the youth, women, SC, ST, farmers, and hard-working and toiling masses.”
{{/usCountry}}The Assam CM made the remarks while holding a roadshow in Kerala's Malappuram as part of the saffron party's Lok Sabha election campaign.
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Earlier, on Sunday, in comments that have snowballed into a major political controversy, with opposition parties and activists accusing him of “hate speech,” the Prime Minister slammed the Congress over ex-PM Singh's statement.
“The Congress manifesto says that it will calculate the gold owned by our mothers and sisters, collect information and then distribute to those whom former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that Muslims have the first right on country's wealth,” he claimed.