New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday dismissed Rahul Gandhi's claim that Prime Minister Narendra Modi got his caste included in the list of Other Backward Classes (OBC) in Gujarat when he was the state's Chief Minister.
"This is a blatant lie. PM Narendra Modi's caste was notified as an OBC on Oct 27, 1999, a full two years before he became the Chief Minister of Gujarat," BJP IT department head Amit Malviya posted on X and shared the web link of the official notification. "The entire Nehru-Gandhi family, starting from Jawaharlal Nehru to Rahul Gandhi, have been against OBCs," Malviya added.
In a speech in Odisha, Rahul Gandhi claimed that PM Modi was not born into an OBC family and is misleading people by identifying himself as an OBC. "Modi ji has been misleading the people by saying that he is an OBC... He changed his caste to OBC after becoming the CM of Gujarat. Therefore, Modi ji is not an OBC by birth," the Congress MP from Wayanad alleged.
BJP Rajya Sabha member Narhari Amin said he was the deputy chief minister of Gujarat when the Congress government in the state had notified "Modh-Ghanchi as OBC on July 25, 1994". Amin is a former Congress leader. "This is the same caste our prime minister, Narendra Modi, belongs to. Rahul Gandhi is insulting OBC communities by cooking up mindless lies on this issue. This decision, and the subsequent government of India notification came when Narendra Modi was not even an MP or MLA, forget being chief minister," Amin wrote on X.
Union Minister Pralhad Joshi shared a Gazzette notification and said that Modi's OBC status was recognised in Ocober 27,199.
Gandhi, however, claimed that the notofication goes to prove that he was right. Taking to X the Congress leader thanked BJP and said “Modi was not an OBC by birth. He became one five decades later. Thank you for confirming my truth,” he wrote in Hindi.
