Reservation is Modi's guarantee, Rahul telling lies: Amit Shah

GANDHINAGAR/AGRA/ETAWAH: Union home minister Amit Shah , at a rally in Ahmedabad on Sunday – and later in rallies in western Uttar Pradesh -- said PM Narendra Modi has guaranteed people that as long as the BJP is in power, nobody would be allowed to tamper with reservation for members of the SC , ST and OBC communities.

Shah was responding to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s post on X which said that the BJP intends to “snatch away reservation of Dalits, backward castes and tribals and end their participation in running the affairs of the country”.

“By making baseless comments, Rahul Gandhi has been attempting to mislead people of the country. The BJP has formed the Union govt for 10 years with full majority. If the BJP had any such intentions, reservation would have been abolished,” Shah said, adding, “Modi has given a guarantee to the people that as long as the BJP is in power, nobody can tamper with reservation.”

Shah said it is the Congress party that has attacked reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs. “When the Congress came to power in Karnataka, it implemented 4% reservation for minorities. The reservation of OBCs was reduced. Then in Andhra Pradesh, Congress implemented 5% reservation for minorities. The share of SCs, STs, and OBCs got reduced,” Shah said.

In Jamia Millia and Aligarh University, those from SC, ST and OBC communities are bereft of reservation even today, he said.

“The Congress opposed backward castes, caused problems for Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar and did not do justice to tribals,” he said, adding that it was the Narendra Modi govt which did justice to the tribal community when Droupadi Murmu was named the President of India.

In UP, Shah hit out at Samajwadi Party (SP) over its stand on Ram temple and giving the ‘Pran Prathistha’ ceremony a miss. “This election is between those who shot at Ram devotees and those who built Ram Mandir,” he said at an election rally in Mainpuri. BJP has fielded Jaiveer Singh against SP chief’s wife, Dimple Yadav, from the seat.

“Should the Ram temple have been built in Ayodhya or not? After Congress, SP and BSP governed UP for years. They kept this issue aside but Modi ji won the case and did bhoomi pujan in five years. Akhilesh ji and Dimple ji were invited for Pran Pratishtha. But they did not attend. Who were they afraid of? Were they were afraid of losing their vote bank?” Shah asked.

Attacking SP for practising “nepotism”, he said, “SP claims to represent Yadavs. This time Akhilesh is contesting from Kannauj, Dimple Yadav from Mainpuri, Akshay Yadav from Firozabad, Aditya Yadav from Budaun and Dharmendra Yadav from Azamgarh. I want to ask Akhilesh, why don’t you find other ‘Yadavs’; why only those from your family? The time has come to end the nepotism and let lotus bloom in Mainpuri.”