Modi men forcing religious rift: Rahul

Shubhadeep Choudhury

Tribune News Service

Bengaluru, October 9

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi today took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s belated reaction on the Dadri lynching incident and said it was “his (Modi’s) people” who “create” communal flareups.

“Everyone knows Modi’s record,” the Congress leader said in reference to Gujarat riots during Modi’s tenure as Chief Minister. “Modi says something but his people, those from the BJP, do something else”, he said.

“Modi took 4-5 days to finally say something on the Dadri incident”, he said.

Addressing village panchayat members here, the Gandhi family scion said whenever there was an election in the corner, the BJP would invariably organise communal clashes.

“They set one community against another. They set Hindus against the Muslims,” he said. “The Congress wants people of different communities to live in harmony. Nobody benefits from a communal strife,” he said.

Earlier, Rahul visited Mandya district, known as the sugarcane belt of Karnataka. The area alone has seen 56 suicides in the last six months, the highest in the state, where 541 farmers have taken away their lives during the period.

He interacted with progressive farmers and students. Talking to mediapersons, Gandhi alleged the BJP-led government at the Centre was not “sensitive” to issues concerning farmers and was viewing states ruled by the BJP and Congress differently.

“They have a different policy for Congress-ruled states. When the UPA was in government, we viewed Indian farmers as Indian farmers. We did not view them as Karnataka farmers or Bihar farmers or Jharkhand farmers.”

The reality was that there was an agrarian crisis in the country and it was very important that the farmers who “give their lives for the country” were supported, he said.