Maharashtra Congress accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of working to erase social harmony in the country and asserted that minorities contributed to the party’s emphatic victory in the Karnataka polls.
People from all castes and religions lived in harmony in India, until the BJP came to power, said Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole at a meeting of the state unit’s minority cell. He accused the BJP of erasing the true identity of India in the past 9 years.
Patole said the BJP government at the Centre was hurting democracy and the Constitution. BJP is doing politics in the name of caste and religion but the people of the country can now see through it, he said.
Patole said the BJP raised religious issues like hijab in the Karnataka Assembly elections, but those leaders who banked on religious issues lost their deposit. The people of Karnataka did not allow BJP’s bigoted politics to continue, he said.
Hitting out at BJP’s double engine slogan, he said, Manipur has a double-engine government. We are seeing what the situation is there today. Patole’s party colleague and former chief minister Ashok Chavan said that the Karnataka polls have shown that there is no need for a double engine in the country. A double engine is needed only when one engine stops but Congress has only one strong and powerful engine and that is Rahul Gandhi, he said.