Anurag Bende and Vaibhav Ganjapure
PUNE/NAGPUR: Congress continues to speak Pakistan’s language on J&K and the only way to permanently defeat such “anti-India forces” is to replicate the Haryana poll verdict in Maharashtra, PM Narendra Modi said Tuesday while campaigning for BJP in Pune.
“Congress and its allies are trying to restore the provision (Article 370) that promoted terrorism and separatism in J&K,” he said. “They (Congress) are displaying a copy of the Constitution at every rally. I want to ask why they couldn’t implement the same Constitution in the entire country when they were in govt for several decades.”
Modi accused Congress’s leadership of being “slaves” to a colonial mindset. “Maharashtra is the land of Shivaji Maharaj, but Congress prefers to praise Aurangzeb. Its figureheads curse Veer Savarkar. I challenge yuvraj (Rahul Gandhi) to hail Veer Savarkar and Balasaheb Thackeray in his speeches.”
The PM branded Congress “a party devoid of integrity, only involved in appeasement politics”. “It is only interested in being in govt and, in to achieve that, it is dividing society based on caste,” he said.
Modi alleged that the Congress govt in Karnataka was funding the party’s Maharashtra campaign. “Congress made tall promises and formed the govt in Karnataka, but now they are looting the people there. A part of that loot is being sent to Maharashtra for the elections.”
At Chimur, Modi spoke of Congress’s “historical bias” against reservation and tribals. In Solapur, Modi described the opposition MVA as an alliance “trying to ride a vehicle with no wheels or brakes”. “It is quite clear that MVA cannot give a stable govt,” he said.