“Foreign powers” are making an attempt to influence India’s elections, but are doomed to fail, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday. “I can see that there is an attempt by some in the world to influence our elections. They are not just giving their opinions but are trying to influence our polls. But they will not be successful,” he said.
“People of India will not get influenced. After Emergency, people of India, including the poor, showed the beauty of India’s democracy. Such people will not be successful. The lamp flickers before it extinguishes. This is the flickering, as they know they will soon be left in the dark,” he said.
Modi asked for the strictest possible punishment under law for Prajwal Revanna, but came down hard on Karnataka’s Congress government for not taking action against the JD(S) MP and letting him go for electoral considerations. “It is a law and order issue. As far as Modi is concerned, as far as BJP is concerned, as far as our Constitution is concerned, I am of the clear view that there should be zero tolerance for such people,” he said.
In his first response to allegations of horrific sexual abuses against Prajwal, Modi referred to the reported recovery of 2,976 videos featuring the MP and said, “These thousands of videos would not be from a single day, which implies that they were from the time when JD(S) was in alliance with Congress (in the state). These videos were gathered (then) and Congress released it during the ongoing polls only after a particular community had voted.”
Muslim quota
PM Modi said he was opposed to “Muslim quota” in Congress-governed Karnataka because the Constitution forbids faith-based reservations, while rejecting the charge that he was anti-Islam and opposed to Muslims.
About the “narrative” that Muslims would be under threat if BJP retained office, he explained that the riots in Gujarat in 2002 when he was chief minister were not the first instance of communal violence in the state. He emphasised that records showed that communal riots were a common recurrence since the 17th and 18th centuries.
But after 2002, there has not been a single communal riot, he stressed, asking the Muslim community to introspect. The country is progressing and if your community is feeling deprived, what is the reason for it, he asked. He appealed to the Muslim community to think about the lives of their children.
The PM also dismissed the “dictatorship” charge, saying it was the Congress leaders who qualified as dictators. The first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru imposed restrictions on freedom of speech through the first amendment to the Constitution, said the PM.
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