GUWAHATI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday went hammer and tongs at the Congress for allegedly indulging in corruption and said a new scam “Tughlaq Road Chunav Ghotala” has come to the fore.
“For those who do not know, there is a road in Delhi called Tughlaq Road and there is a bungalow there where a big leader lives. In the last few days, a game, entailing crores of rupees, is being played. Sack loads of currency notes are being seized from people connected to this bungalow,” Modi told a crowd at a rally in Assam’s Mangaldoi.
He said on one hand the Congress called “chowkidar” a “chor” while on the other hand, there was evidence that the party was involved in looting.
“The seized money, released by Government of India, was meant for the nutrition of poor children and pregnant women. This new scam has come to light even as old cases of corruption against them are on. By snatching money meant for the poor, this party is contesting elections. It will be a sin to vote for them,” the PM told the crowd.
Later, addressing another rally at Silchar in Southern Assam’s Barak Valley, he slammed the Congress for dividing the country on the lines of religions without thinking too much about the welfare of minorities in Pakistan.
“In 1947, the country was divided on the lines of faiths. Pakistan was built in the name of Islam. The Congress had then ignored the issue of welfare of the minorities there. Today, the situation is such that people, who went to temples and gurdwaras, fled to India. It was due to the sins of the Congress that they have become stateless in their own country. The Congress had played with the present and the future of lakhs of people,” he said.
The PM said the NDA was committed to pass the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, an issue that evoked widespread protests across the Northeast in recent months.
“It is our commitment that we will pass the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill. But we will talk to all sections of the society before seeking to pass it in Parliament. The Assamese identity will be protected. We will ensure that injustice is not done to any,” he asserted.
A large number of people from Barak Valley could not make it to the list of draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) which is being updated in Assam to detect illegal immigrants. The Citizenship Bill seeks to protect the immigrants belonging to six persecuted non-Muslim communities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who migrated to India till December 31, 2014.
Modi said the government was also working hard to implement Clause 6 of the Assam Accord which the Rajiv Gandhi government had signed with All Assam Students’ Union in 1985 at the end of six-year-long bloody anti-illegal immigrants’ agitation.
Clause 6 of the Assam Accord says: “Appropriate constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards, shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people”.