NEW DELHI: The Congress on Saturday hit back at Narendra Modi over his remarks that the party's manifesto bore a Muslim League imprint, saying the prime minister "does not know his history" as it was none other than Jan Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee himself who was part of a coalition government in Bengal with the League in the early 1940s.
The opposition party also accused the BJP of practicing "politics of divisiveness."
Addressing an election rally in Saharanpur, Modi said the Congress manifesto bears a Muslim League imprint, while a part of it is dominated by the leftists.
Reacting to the prime minister's remarks, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said, "The prime minister does not know his history as it was, in fact, none other than Mookerjee, the president of the Hindu Mahasabha then, who was himself part of the coalition government in Bengal with the Muslim League."
The Hindu Mahasabha was also in coalition with the Muslim League in Sindh and North-West Frontier Province. "It is the BJP, not the Congress, that believes in and practices the politics of divisiveness," Ramesh said.
The prime minister's attack on the Congress came a day after it released its manifesto, focusing on five "pillars of justice" and 25 guarantees under those, at the party headquarters in the presence of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and former party chiefs Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
Right to apprenticeship, a legal guarantee for MSP, passing a constitutional amendment to raise the 50 per cent cap on reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs, a nationwide caste census and scrapping of the Agnipath scheme are among the promises made by the Congress in its Lok Sabha polls manifesto.