Making a scathing attack on the Congress, Union Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday accused it of "always being anti-OBC" and said it wanted to reduce the OBC reservation quota.
In a Facebook post, he said the Congress had suddenly found love for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) whereas it had always been anti-OBC and had opportunistically supported reservation for the non-backwards.
"Why this sudden love for the Other Backward Classes? The OBCs deserted Congress Party in the early 1990s. The Congress was always anti-OBC," Jaitley said.
"Rajiv Gandhi made strong speech in Parliament against the Mandal Commission. Recently, the Congress Party opposed the grant of constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes. They voted against the constitutional amendment in parliament," he added.
The Minister alleged that Congress wanted to reduce the quota for the OBCs by supporting reservation for the non-backwards knowing fully well that the judiciary will not allow 50 percent cap on reservations to be waived and the new claimants would eat into the OBC quota.
Attacking the Congress, he said: "P. Chidambaram believes that frying pakodas does not create jobs. Rahul Gandhi says that running dhabas can be a launch pad for start ups. In dynastic parties, political positions are heritable, wisdom is not."
He added that dynastic political parties are family and personality-dominated where ideology takes a back seat.
"You can oppose the OBC when it suits you. You can shed crocodile tears for them when the opportunism so requires. You can run down jobs created by frying pakodas. You can quantify on the virtues of running a dhaba. The leader's ill-informed instincts become the ideology.
"This can only happen to a party which becomes ideologyless; pushes itself to the fringe; is willing to act as a tailender to regional parties. All this because its only obsession is a person called Narendra Modi," Jaitley said.
He also attacked the Congress President on his "customary inaccuracies" when he said that Coca Cola owner sold 'shikanji' (lemonade) and owner of McDonald's was a 'dhabawala'.
"Factually what he stated was incorrect... The great grandson of the man who authored 'The Discovery of India' could with his customary inaccuracies one day give to this country his monumental work on 'The Rediscovery of Coca Cola'," Jaitley said.
"Interacting with his interviewer in Singapore a few weeks ago, Rahul Gandhi left his audience stunned by suggesting if MRI machines in India were connected, this would lead to a medical revolution... He told an audience in Karnataka that his party believes that there should be only one GST rate as in Singapore.
"On education he believes we must have 200 IITs. The UPA never did so. It is the NDA which is now creating a network of IITs, IIMs and AIIMS all over the country.
"In all the above statements, there is no ideological pattern. Ignorance with anti-Modism is a common thread," Jaitley said.
--IANS
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