Foreign powers are trying to influence our polls, says PM Modi
NEW DELHI: “Foreign powers” are making an attempt to influence India’s elections, but are doomed to fail, PM Modi said 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, have 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 also asked for the strictest possible punishment under law for Prajwal Revanna, but also came down hard on Karnataka’s Congress govt 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.”
PM Modi on Monday 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 as such.
In an interview to Times Now Navbharat, the PM also dismissed the “dictatorship” charge, saying if an exercise was conducted to determine who qualifies to be a “dictator”, Congress will be found to have fulfilled all the parameters, right since the days of the first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru who imposed restrictions on freedom of speech through the first amendment to the Constitution.
“Suppose, there are 100 points that define dictatorship. Let’s write Congress on one side and BJP on the other side. Who ticks boxes of dictatorship? What did his grandmother do, put a tick next to it, then put a tick next to what leaders of Modi’s party did, put a tick mark next to what his great grandfather did. Their government would come and sit in newsrooms. Will they ever debate this? Put a tick mark. What was Nehru ji’s first amendment to the Constitution. Put a tick mark. During the Emergency, journalists would write poems about atrocities sitting in jail. Put a tick mark,” he said.
Responding in detail to a question 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 CM 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 was not a single communal riot,” he stressed while asking the Muslim community to introspect. “I am telling this to educated Muslims. Please introspect. Think. The country is progressing and if your community is feeling deprived, what is the reason for it?”
He continued, “I want to appeal to the Muslim community, please think about the lives of your children. Please think about your future. I don’t want any community to live like bonded labourers just because somebody is always fear mongering.”