Taking a jibe at Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party on his day-long visit to poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that both the parties did not give Constitutional recognition to the Backward Classes Commission when they were in coalition with Congress government at the Centre. However, it was the Narendra Modi government that finished the long-pending demand.
"OBCs did not have reservations in medical and engineering admissions during the Congress' rule. There was no reservation in the examination. The BJP started the reservations for the OBC and today thousands of students are doctors and engineers. SP and BSP supported Congress for years. Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had delivered a speech on the reservation of the OBC for more than one and a half hours in the Lok Sabha," Shah said addressing here.
Shah also lauded former chief minister of the state Kalyan Singh who was awarded Padma Vibhushan on the 73rd Republic Day this year, and said that he had resigned from the chief minister's office with a smile on his face for the sake of the construction of Ram Temple.
"PM Modi honoured former chief minister Kalyan Singh with Padma Vibhushan award on this Republic Day. He had started the administration of a mafia-free government for the first time in Uttar Pradesh. For the first time, I saw a person on TV resigning with a smile on his face showing that the chief minister's post can be sacrificed 100 times if Ram Temple is constructed and we have honoured that person (Kalyan Singh)," he said.
Hitting out at Akhilesh Yadav over his objection on the GST raids that were conducted at Kanpur based businessman Peeyush Jain later last year, Shah said that when SP chief is not going to use the money the investigative sleuths recovered from Jain, then why he is criticising the governance issues.
"PM Modi has provided housing, medical colleges, toilets to poor by seizing properties worth over Rs 2000 crore from land mafias under Gangster Act .They (Samajwadi Party) have problems when GST or Income Tax department raids are conducted. When the bundle of note are recovered in the raids, they say that we are doing politics. Why are you scared, Akhilesh Yadav? What connection do you have with them?" he said.
"They said that the raids are being conducted to have an impact on the election. Tell the people of the state did you want to contest the election with that money(recovered from raids)? If black money is recovered from a man, how would the election be impacted by this? This is because you wanted to contest the election with that money. Currently, the Modi government is at the Centre, strict action will be taken against the ones who evade tax," Shah added.
Shah's public engagements are significant as elections on 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh will be conducted in seven phases starting from February 10.
The second phase of the Uttar Pradesh elections will be held on February 14, the third phase on February 20, the fourth phase on February 23, the fifth phase on February 27, the sixth phase on March 3 and the seventh and the last phase will be conducted on March 7.
The counting of votes will take place on March 10.
( With inputs from ANI )
Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor