Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday claimed that the Congress and the Samajwadi Party will run a bulldozer over the Ram temple if elected to power, and asked them to take lessons from Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on where bulldozers should be used instead.
Addressing election rallies in Uttar Pradesh, PM Modi predicted that his government would return, scoring a hat-trick in the Lok Sabha elections. The Congress, according to him, had a mission to score just 50 seats to "save its honour".
The Prime Minister addressed public meetings in Barabanki, Fatehpur and Hamirpur.
He accused the opposition INDIA bloc of planning to give their "vote bank" - meaning Muslims - a big chunk of reservation in government jobs and education meant for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.
In Barabanki, he said the bloc was in the fray to create instability. "As elections progress, these 'INDI alliance' people have started collapsing like a pack of cards." He hit out at the Congress and the Samajwadi Party on the issue of the Ayodhya temple.
"A senior SP leader had said on the day of Ram Navami that the Ram temple is useless. At the same time, the Congress is preparing to overturn the Supreme Court's decision on the Ram temple," he alleged.
"If the SP and the Congress come to power, they will send Ram Lalla back to the tent and bulldoze the temple," he claimed while asking them to take "tuition" from Yogi Adityanath on where bulldozers should be used.
The Yogi Adityanath government has been accused of using bulldozers to illegally raze property of alleged criminals, and the opposition has claimed that the victims are mostly Muslims.
He maintained that "nothing is bigger than the vote bank" for the opposition allies.
"The SP and the Congress have surrendered to appeasement. And when Modi tells their truth to the country, they say Modi is creating a Hindu-Muslim divide. The vote bank these people run after has also started understanding the truth now," he said.
"Our mothers and sisters are happy with the law on triple talaq and are continuously blessing the BJP," he said.
He slammed the opposition over "attempts" to bring Muslims into the quota.
"When the Constitution was made, the Constituent Assembly decided that there would be no reservation on the basis of religion," he said.
But the Congress did this in Karnataka, he added. "There they made all Muslims OBC overnight. They looted a huge portion of the reservation given to the OBC." In Hamirpur, the Prime Minister repeated his allegation that the opposition planned to give away people's wealth to members of the Muslim community.
"Today, I have come to caution you against the SP and the Congress. They will take your vote, but after coming to power, they will distribute these gifts to those who do 'vote jihad' for them," he said, picking on a term used by an INDIA bloc leader.
He also slammed the opposition over the now scrapped Article 370 that gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and mocked it over past advice by Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar on relations with Pakistan.
"They say that Pakistan has a nuclear bomb, but those making these threats do not know that it does not even have the money to maintain it," the Prime Minister said.
"They say it has missiles. The defence corridor we are building in Bundelkhand is not for making firecrackers but for making missiles," he added. He said the Congress also planned to restore Article 370.
PM Modi said a new chapter will begin in Bundelkhand's history when the Rs 40,000 crore Ken-Betwa river link project is completed.
"Today, Uttar Pradesh is at the top among the states with the maximum number of expressways. It is on top in terms of the number of airports. UP is at the top with metros in seven cities. Not only this, Uttar Pradesh is also at the top in welfare schemes for the poor that I run," he said.
The Prime Minister said the BJP government has provided 15 lakh houses to the poor in UP's cities and 35 lakh houses in villages.
He claimed that people had defeated INDIA bloc in the first four election phases alone, and the alliance workers had lost heart.
"No one wants to work hard in the remaining election. The workers of INDI Alliance were already disappointed, now they have stopped leaving their homes," he claimed.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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