Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday lashed out at the BJP for “speaking wrong things about a particular community.”
“This is a very objectionable statement which cannot be forgiven,” he said.
In a post in Hindi on X, Yadav said, “Saying wrong things about a particular community by naming it is an insult to that community spread across the world. At the international level, this has hurt the secular and democratic identity of the country.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Banswara suggested that if the Congress came to power, it would redistribute the wealth of the people among Muslims, and cited former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement that the minority community had the first claim on the country’s resources.
Addressing a rally, Modi alleged that the Congress planned to give the people’s hard-earned money and valuables to the “infiltrators” and “those who have more children.”
Replying to the prime minister’s remarks, Yadav said: “This is a very objectionable statement, which cannot be forgiven. The lies that people in the highest positions in the BJP are spreading against the Congress by saying absurd things in the election rallies are exposing the lies of the BJP itself.”
The SP president further said on the one hand, they (BJP leaders) are claiming that they are going to get 400 seats, and on the other, they want to get some votes in the election by “scaring” the public.
“The truth is that they are putting their ‘Mann ki baat’ on someone else,” he said.
Sharpening his attack, the former chief minister said those who had taken away the hard-earned money of the poor and women during demonetisation were now talking about jewellery.
“The truth is that the middle class, who have one or two pieces of jewellery, is also voting against the BJP because they are also affected by unemployment and inflation just like the poor people, farmers, labourers, youth, backward, Dalit, minorities, women, tribal and the oppressed upper castes,” he said, adding the BJP was giving such a statement because even its own supporters were not voting for it.
“After the first phase of voting, this statement of desperation is the first statement and also the trend of the BJP government going out of the country. This is the BJP’s admission of its defeat,” he said.
The SP chief said only those who have the intention of destroying the Constitution can use such unconstitutional language.
“Will the Election Commission allow anyone to contest elections after such a statement? History will remember this and history will never forgive the BJP for this,” Yadav added.
Prime Minister Modi had said in Banswara, Rajasthan that “this urban Naxal mindset, my mothers and sisters, will not even leave your mangalsutra.”
Addressing an election rally in Aligarh, a constituency with a sizeable Muslim population, Modi accused the opposition — Congress and the Samajwadi Party — of following the policy of appeasement and yet doing nothing to uplift the socio-economic condition of the Muslim community.
Voting in the second phase will take place on April 26 and it will cover eight parliamentary constituencies of Amroha, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Gautambuddh Nagar, Bulandshahr (SC), Aligarh, and Mathura. Counting of votes will be held on June 4.
