‘PoK belongs to India, we will take it’
STATE TIMES NEWS
RAEBARELI/PRATAPGARH/GONDA (UP): Referring to Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar’s remarks on Pakistan having the atom bomb, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday said Rahul Gandhi can be scared of Pakistan’s atom bomb but the BJP is not.
“Pakistan-occupied Kashmir belongs to India and “we will take it”, he said while addressing a series of election rallies in Uttar Pradesh.
“Mani Shankar Aiyar and Farooq Abdullah scare us and Rahul baba silently enjoys it. Rahul baba, clear your stand before the public,” he said.
“When I stood up (in Parliament) to abrogate Article 370, Rahul baba said do not scrap it.. he said rivers of blood will flow in Kashmir. Rahul Baba, five years have passed and nobody has the courage even to throw a stone, let alone flow rivers of blood.”
Intensifying his attack on the Congress, the senior BJP leader said, “From 2004 to 2014, the Congress government functioned with the support of SP and BSP. There would be bomb explosions virtually every day.”
“Then Modi ji came (to power). Pakistan being a habitual (offender) carried out attacks in Pulwama and Uri. But, they had forgotten that this time, it was not the government of Manmohan Singh. It was of Modi. Within 10 days, surgical strikes and airstrikes were carried out,” he said.
The Union Home Minister launched a blistering attack on the Gandhi family in its Raebareli bastion, accusing Sonia Gandhi of “spending more than 70 per cent of her MP funds on minorities”.
He alleged the Congress was talking of bringing back triple talaq if it comes to power at the Centre. Shah asked the opposition party and its Raebareli candidate Rahul Gandhi to make their stand clear on triple talaq and on a Uniform Civil Code.
The Union home minister spoke at poll meetings in Raebareli, Pratapgarh and Gonda.
Accusing the opposition of appeasement politics, Shah claimed Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Samajwadi party chief Akhilesh Yadav and his wife Dimple Yadav were invited to the consecration ceremony at the Ram temple in Ayodhya but they did not attend.
“These people did not go because they were afraid of their vote bank. But the BJP is not afraid of vote bank. Not just Ram temple, (PM Narendra) Modi ji also built Baba Vishwanath’s Darbar (in Varanasi) which was destroyed by Aurangzeb. Somnath temple is also being built of gold. Modi ji has worked to redecorate our places of worship,” he said.
Shah termed the opposition’s assertion that reservation would end if BJP wins 400 seats a “lie” and claimed that after Congress came to power in Karnataka and Telangana, its governments gave reservations to Muslims overnight by cutting the share of SC, ST and OBCs.
“Today, I am stating the ‘Modi ki guarantee’… till the time the BJP has even a single MP, we will not allow scrapping of reservation for SC, ST and OBCs,” Shah said.
Urging people to ensure the BJP wins 400 Lok Sabha seats, Shah said, “This election is an election is to make Narendra Modi prime minister for the third time, to make India the third largest economy in the world, to give a befitting reply to Pakistan for its actions and replying to terrorist’s bullets with shells.”
In Raebareli, he described the Gandhi family as a hindrance in the path of development of the constituency.
“You gave the Gandhi family chances for years, but no development work has been done … They (Congress) do not believe in development. They do not even come to you in your happiness and sorrows.”
Shah urged the people to vote for the BJP’s Raebareli candidate Dinesh Pratap Singh, and said, “We will connect Raebareli with Modiji’s development journey.”
“The ‘shahzada’ (prince) has come here to seek votes. You have been voting for many years. Have you received anything from the MP fund? If you have not received it, then where did it go? It went to their vote bank. Sonia Gandhi has spent more than 70 percent of the MP funds on minorities,” Shah claimed.
Intensifying his attack, he said, “The Gandhi family is an expert in lying. They are now promising Rs 1 lakh for every woman. In the Telangana (assembly) polls, they had promised to give Rs 15,000 to every woman. The women of the state elected them (Congress) … Forget about Rs 15,000, they did not even give Rs 1,500.”
“Many people here told me that this is a family seat… It is true. The people of Raebareli have made the Gandhi and Nehru families win for years. But after getting elected from here, how many times did Sonia Ji and her family come to Raebareli? Okay, Sonia ji’s health is not good, but has Rahul baba or sister Priyanka come?”
Referring to several accidents in Raebareli in the past years, including the boiler explosion at an NTPC plant in 2017, Shah claimed none from the Gandhi family visited the victims or their kin. “Our (candidate) Dinesh Pratap Singh visited every (grieving) household,” he said.
At the rally in Pratapgarh, Shah alleged that the Congress, Samajwadi Party and the BSP were “taking care of Article 370 as their ‘illegitimate child'”.
“You made Modi ji prime minister for the second time and he scrapped Article 370, worked to end terrorism in Kashmir and make it an integral part of India. But these two princes… Akhilesh (Yadav) and Rahul Baba say that if they come (to power), they will bring back Article 370,” Shah told the rally.
Asserting that the opposition INDIA bloc has no chance of winning the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP leader said, “Assuming that they do, who will be the prime minister?”
“When a reporter asked this, the answer was a one-year term on a rotational basis. Rahul baba, this is not a grocery shop,” Shah said.
Referring to the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, he said that for 70 years, the Congress, SP and BSP kept the issue hanging. “Modi ji did ‘bhoomipujan’, and on January 22 he did the consecration,” Shah said.