BJP’s two-point programme is to encourage injustice: Rahul Gandhi

RAIGARH: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi hit out at the BJP on Thursday, alleging the ruling party’s two-point programme is to encourage injustice and spread hatred and violence.

Gandhi was addressing a public meeting at Rengalpali village in Chhattsigarh’s Raigarh district after his ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’ entered the state from Odisha.

This was his first visit to Chhattisgarh after the November 2023 assembly polls, wherein his party was ousted from power in the state.

He also targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, claiming he was not an OBC by birth as his caste “ghanchi” was included in the Other Backward Classes list in 2000 in Gujarat by the then BJP government there.

One year ago, the Bharat Jodo Yatra covered about 4,000 km from Kanyakumari to Kashmir (in 2022-23) against the BJP’s act to “spread hatred and create an atmosphere of violence,” Gandhi said.

Now, the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra has been started to seek justice for the people, he said.

Gandhi said a beautiful slogan came out of the Bharat Jodo Yatra: “Nafrat ke bazaar me Mohabbat ki dukan” (shop of love in the market of hatred). The slogan deeply explains the Congress’ ideology, he said.

“They open markets of hatred and we open the shop of love. They run markets of violence; we run the shop of non-violence,” the Lok Sabha member claimed.

The BJP’s two-point programme is to “encourage injustice and spread hatred and violence,” Gandhi alleged.

He said the second edition of the yatra is for justice from an economic and social point of view.

The country has been facing the highest unemployment rate in the last 40 years; inflation is rising, the public sector is being privatised, lands of adivasis (tribals) are being snatched and people are facing “economic injustice,” the former Congress president claimed.

“Why is there unemployment? It is because everything is being given to Adani. Your assets are being handed to him. You pay GST (Goods and Services Tax) and it directly goes into the pocket of Adani,” he said.

Reiterating his party’s pitch for a caste census, Gandhi said, “If Modi ji says there are only two castes—poor and rich—in the country, then how come he became an OBC…Modi ji was not born as an OBC. Modi ji’s caste ghanchi was included in the OBC (list) in 2000 by the then BJP government in Gujarat.”