PM Modi invokes Ambedkar to target Congress on reservations: ‘Nehru would have…’

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday accused India's first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru of ‘opposing’ reservations for the deprived castes.

Addressing a rally in Bihar's Motihari, the prime minister said,"Had it not been for Baba Saheb Ambedkar, Nehru would have never agreed to quotas for SCs, STs and OBCs. Nehru had made his views clear on the issue in letters he wrote to the then chief ministers in the country."

"This has been the Congress' trait under successive prime ministers. Be it, Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi, they all opposed reservations. SCs, STs and OBCs have never got respect from the Congress", Modi was quoted by PTI as saying.

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Modi made the allegation while lashing out at the opposition parties including Congress, accusing them of spreading a "falsehood" that the BJP, upon return to power with a brute majority, could scrap quotas by changing the Constitution.

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“The truth is that we have been protecting the rights of the deprived castes. It is only with the NDA led by BJP that rights of SCs, STs and OBCs are secure,” he added.

The prime minister also charged the opposition INDIA bloc with having plans to give reservation benefits "based on religion".

"They want to do this because they are now left with just one vote bank. They are no longer supported by SCs, STs and OBCs, so they now care for only those carrying out a vote jihad", Modi added. 

During the Lok Sabha election campaign, Modi has time and again accused the Congress of trying to give away the reservations meant for the SC, ST and OBC communities on the basis of religion. 

“They (Congress) are the people who stop the functioning of the Parliament, they question the Election Commission, they question the EVM, and now for their vote bank, they are insulting the constitution... Till the time I am alive, I will not let them give the reservation meant for Dalits, SCs, STs, and OBCs to the Muslims in the name of religion,” he had said in one of the rallies, in Telangana's Medak.