Modi backs TMC with Congress over its silence on inheritance tax controversy | India News

KOLKATA/MALDA/PATNA: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday blamed the Trinamool Congress for leaving nearly 26,000 families in Bengal without a livelihood by orchestrating an alleged recruitment scam that forced Calcutta HC to scrap appointments made by the School Service Commission in 2016 and order some recruits to pay back their salaries with interest.

“Trinamool has played with the future of Bengali youth. Not only have they lost their source of income due to the school recruitment scam, these youth have been saddled with loans they took to pay Trinamool officials,” Modi said at a poll rally in Malda.

The Prime Minister aligned himself between CM Mamata Banerjee’s party and the Congress on the inheritance tax issue, questioning the former party’s ‘silence’ on both the grand old party’s plan to ‘loot’ citizens and give away their wealth to ‘ infiltrators’.

“Loot zindagi ke saath bhi, zindagi ke baad bhi (Loot in life and after death),” he said, echoing what he said two days ago in Chhattisgarh’s Surguja.

Thanking the crowd for their love and affection, the Prime Minister said, “Sometimes I feel like I was born in Bengal in a previous birth. Or maybe in my next birth I will be born to a Bengali mother.”

Malda district has two constituencies: Malda (North) and Malda (South). According to the 2011 census, Muslims make up 51% of the population. While the BJP won Malda (North) and Congress Malda (South) in 2019, TMC made significant gains in the panchayat polls.

In Bihar’s Araria and Munger, Modi focused on Congress’s “Karnataka model to deprive OBCs of their 27% quota” by including all Muslims, irrespective of their financial status, in the list of backward castes.

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He alleged that the Congress could go to any lengths to amend the Constitution as an extension of its ‘appeasement policy’, linking it to previous attempts to introduce religion-based reservations and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement that minorities would have the first right to national resources.

“While the INDIA bloc believes in tushtikaran (appeasement), the BJP-led NDA has always strived for santushtikaran (satisfaction of all). Everyone who is entitled to something should get it. I provided tap water, toilets, electricity and free rations to mothers and sisters without asking their religion. This is true secularism and social justice.”

Without naming former Bihar CM Lalu Prasad, he said RJD had not said a word about Congress’ strategy as they went hand in hand in pursuing vote bank politics. “The rights of the OBCs are being taken away and RJD is clapping. But if Modi is there, these people cannot get it done. This is Modi’s guarantee,” he said to applause.