PM Narendra Modi not OBC by birth: Rahul Gandhi; govt shares ’99 notification

Tribune News Service

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, February 8

A political storm erupted on Thursday over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s caste status with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi claiming that the PM was not backward by caste and became one “only after assuming chief ministership of Gujarat in 2000.”

Sharing a 1999 notification that included PM’s “Modh Ghanchi” caste in the National Commission for Backward Classes’ central OBC (other backward classes) list, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi said Rahul’s lies would “crumble under the weight of truth.”

“Rahul Gandhi shamelessly peddles falsehoods and this time claims that PM wasn’t born in the OBC caste and got his caste notified after he became the CM of Gujarat. The truth is PM’s OBC status was recognised on October 27, 1999, two years before he became Gujarat’s CM,” said Joshi with the ruling BJP slamming Wayanad MP’s remarks as an “insult to OBCs.”

Rahul, further reacting to the union minister, said the notification showed that the PM was an OBC on paper only. “Modi ji is an OBC on paper. He was not an OBC for five decades since birth,” he said.

Moments later, Narhari Amin, who was Gujarat deputy CM under the Congress regime, said the decision to include PM’s Modh and Ghanchi castes in the OBC segment was taken on July 25, 1994 when the Congress was in power in Gujarat.

“Narendra Modi was neither an MP or MLA at that time, forget being CM,” said Amin, currently Rajya Sabha MP of the BJP. Rahul’s comments came a day after PM slammed the grand old party for “throwing Sitaram Kesri, former Congress president, who belonged to an extremely backward class, on the footpath.”

The PM has also accused the Congress of “conspiring to dislodge former Bihar CM Karpoori Thakur, the late OBC leader”, who has now been awarded the Bharat Ratna.

FIGHT FOR VOTE

As per CSDS Lokniti Data, in 1996 LS polls, 19% OBCs voted for BJP. With Modi’s arrival in 2014, BJP bagged 34% OBC vote, which rose to 44% in 2019. Congress got 25% OBC vote in 1996, which came down to 15% in 2019

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