Had it not been for Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru wouldn’t have agreed to quota: Narendra Modi

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, May 21

With two phases left for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections to end, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday intensified his attack on the opposition Congress, firing salvos at late prime ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

Invoking BR Ambedkar, the PM, speaking in Bihar’s Champaran, said Nehru would not have agreed to reservation had it not been for the Father of the Constitution.

“Had Babasaheb Ambedkar not been there, Nehru would not have allowed reservation for the SCs and STs. He wrote to the chief ministers of the time opposing reservation. The Congress mindset has always been anti-reservation,” said the PM, countering the INDIA bloc charge that the BJP was looking for 400 plus seats in the Lok Sabha to “change the Constitution and scrap constitutional quotas”. Modi argued that reservation for the SCs, STs and OBCs was safe only under the BJP-led NDA, and cited a letter Nehru wrote to the chief ministers of the time to oppose quotas.

The PM sought votes in the name of the NDA government’s “10 years of social justice marked by constitutional status to the National Backward Classes Commission and extension of OBC quota to Sainik Schools among others”.

“All PMs of this (Nehru-Gandhi) family — from Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi to Rajiv Gandhi — opposed OBC quotas. The Congress has always betrayed the deprived. That is why it is now left with only one vote bank,” the PM said, repeating his allegation that the Congress wanted to “usurp SC, ST, OBC quota and give it to those who practise vote jihad”.

“Now, to appease the only vote bank it has been left with, the Congress wants to snatch SC/ST/OBC reservation and give to those who indulge in vote jihad,” said Modi in a stinging attack on the opposition alliance in Bihar.

At another rally in Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj, the PM said, “Everyone knows who poses the greatest threat to the Constitution.”

He was referring to the June 12, 1975, Allabahad High Court judgment which held then PM Indira Gandhi guilty of electoral malpractices and disqualified her from holding public office for six years.

“In Raebareli, when democracy was throttled by Indira Gandhi, it was the Allahabad High Court that disqualified her from contesting elections,” the PM said in Prayagraj, attacking the SP-Congress alliance for attempting to snatch quotas to favour “vote jihad practitioners”.

The PM said “a cleanliness drive against the mafia raj is underway in Yogi Adityanath-led UP”.

Later, the PM, speaking in his Lok Sabha segment Varanasi, harked back to pro-women agenda, promising to convert women’s “shakti into mahashakti” once elected on June 4. Listing government schemes on rural housing, drone didis, subsidised cooking gas and solar panels among others, Modi, said, “When a home cannot run without women, how can the country?”