Azamgarh: Prime Minister, Narendra Modi addressing at the foundation stone laying ceremony of Poorvanchal Expressway, in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh on July 14, 2018. (Source: PIB Photo via PTI)
Accusing the Congress of stalling the triple talaq Bill in Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday asked if the party was “only for Muslim men”.
“All I want to ask is, is the party only for Muslim men or is there place for women in it too? These people block laws in Parliament and do not allow it to function,” Modi said at a rally in Azamgarh after laying the foundation stone of the Purvanchal Expressway, a Rs 23,000 crore project that is expected to connect Eastern UP with Lucknow.
Modi’s attack comes ahead of the upcoming Monsoon session of Parliament. The triple talaq Bill has been passed by the Lok Sabha but is pending in the Rajya Sabha.
“All these parties have been exposed by their stands on triple talaq. On the one hand when the Centre is trying to make lives easier for women, these parties are working to make the lives of women, especially Muslim sisters and daughters, more difficult…I would tell these dynastic parties, these parties that are toiling day and night to oust Modi, that there are still four to five days left for Parliament to begin. Meet the Muslim women who suffer due triple talaq, meet the mothers and sisters who suffer because of halala, ask them about their plight, and then put your point of view in Parliament,” he said.
Attacking Gandhi over an alleged remark attributed to him – in an Urdu daily — during his interaction with Muslim intellectuals on Wednesday, Modi said, “I have read in newspapers that the Congress naamdar (dynast) has said that the Congress is a party of Muslims. This debate has been on for the last two days. I am not surprised because during the Manmohan Singh government, the prime minister himself that said that Muslims have the first claim on the country’s resources….”
Targeting Opposition parties for coming together against the BJP, Modi said, “Those who couldn’t see eye to eye, those who didn’t like each other, they are now together. Whenever they meet, day or night, it’s ‘Modi, Modi, Modi’… all these dynastic parties are coming together and are bent on stopping development.”
The PM also praised UP CM Yogi Adityanath for the law and order situation in the state. Referring to the spate of encounters, he said, “We know what the condition of big criminals has been under Yogi Adityanath’s reign.”
Modi later left for Varanasi, where he addressed a rally and laid foundation stones for projects worth over Rs 900 crore. While claiming that the government had spent over Rs 1,000 crore on infrastructure projects in the region over the years, he took potshots at former CM Akhilesh Yadav, saying, “We shouldn’t forget how Kashi was in deep trouble for the four years before our government came to power in the state – drains were overflowing, the ghats were dirty and the road to the airport was so poor that people avoided flights and were forced to take trains from the Cantonment railway station.”
PM Modi is scheduled to visit Mirzapur district on Sunday where he will dedicate the Bansagar Canal Project. Mirzapur and neighbouring regions, where Amit Shah visited earlier this month, is the stronghold of the party’s allies, the Apna Dal and the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party led by Om Prakash Rajbhar.