Amit Shah ‘dares’ Congress to clarify stand on OBC bill

Lucknow/Chandauli: Looking to woo dalit voters, BJP chief Amit Shah on Sunday dared Congress president Rahul Gandhi to make public his party’s stand on the amended OBC bill before it is taken up for passage in the Rajya Sabha.

He said if the Congress does not help in the bill’s passage in the House it would get exposed as a party disinterested in welfare of the backward communities.

The Constitution (123rd Amendment) Bill, 2017, commonly known as the OBC bill, was passed in the Lok Sabha on August 2 and will now go to the Rajya Sabha for passage.

The proposed legislation seeks to grant the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) a constitutional status on a par with the National Commissions for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Mr Shah, who was in Chandauli to attend a function on renaming Mughalsarai junction in Uttar Pradesh after RSS stalwart Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, said, “The Modi government has got the OBC bill passed in the Lok Sabha. This will go to the Rajya Sabha. Will (Congress president) Rahul Gandhi clarify before the country whether his party will help in the passage of the bill in the Rajya Sabha or not. This will make it clear whether the Congress is really for the welfare of the backward communities.”

Speaking at a separate function in Varanasi, Mr Shah once again questioned the silence of Mr Gandhi on the National Register of Citizens (NRC) aimed at identifying illegal migrants.

Accusing the Congress of playing vote bank politics, Mr Shah said that the Congress must tell people about its stand on the issue of illegal immigrants and decide if it wants to keep intruders here or not.

“The NRC is for taking out Bangladeshis from Assam. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee says NRC should not happen, Congress says the same. I ask Rahul Gandhi — should NRC happen or not? He does not reply,” the BJP chief said.

The NRC was initiated by the UPA under the Manmohan Singh government to fulfil the commitment made in the Assam Accord of 1985. However, the manner in which this exercise has been undertaken by the BJP governments at the Centre and in Assam, under a Supreme Court direction, has been criticised by the Congress.

The BJP president also hit out at Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for their silence on the NRC issue.

“Today I would like to ask the SP, the BSP and the Congress whether they want the infiltrators to stay in the country or they should be driven out. I know the answer of the people of Uttar Pradesh. The answer is that not even a single infiltrator should be allowed to stay in India,” he said.

Mr Shah also lashed out at the Opposition and said that no matter how hard these parties try, they would not be able to defeat the Modi government in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

“Even if bua (BSP chief Mayawati), bhatija (SP chief Akhilesh Yadav) and Rahul join hands, our tally of seats (in Lok Sabha from UP) will be 74 instead of 73 now and will not be 72,” he said.

In 2014, the saffron party had bagged 71 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state and two went to its ally Apna Dal, taking the NDA tally to 73.

Mr Shah asked the audience at the meeting if they would vote for the BJP and the crowd responded in affirmative.

Mr Shah also lauded the Yogi Adityanath government for taking the benefits of welfare schemes to the doorsteps of the poor. He said that huge investments are coming to Uttar Pradesh mainly because of the good governance of the Yogi government.

Minutes after Mr Shah delivered his speech, former Union minister Yashwant Sinha slammed the BJP chief for seeking votes in a government-sponsored function.

“The Mughalsarai station renaming function was an official one arranged at government cost. Did it behove Amit Shah to ask for votes for BJP at this function? The finest values of our democracy are being destroyed one by one, nobody even notices, much less worry,” he tweeted.

The BJP government has renamed the Mughalsarai railway station after Upadhyaya as a mark of respect to the RSS leader who was found dead in mysterious circumstances near the station in February 1968.