Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday that the Congress and its INDI alliance partners want to “snatch” Dalits’ and backward classes’ reservation benefits and transfers them to Muslims in a “deep conspiracy to divide the country on the basis of religion.”

Addressing his last 2024 election rally in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, he said he has unmasked the INDI alliance plan during the current poll campaign, and therefore the alliance leaders are abusing him.

These parties have a track record of having “snatched” reservation benefits of the SCs, STs and the OBCs, the prime minister said. Reservation of jobs in the government on the basis of religion, or in sports, tenders, and university admissions, is against the Constitution and what its chief architect Babasaheb Ambedkar wanted, he said.

Modi has taken a vow, he said, that he will not allow anyone to snatch the reservation rights of the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and the backward classes. “They are angry with me over this,” he said.

The prime minister said the Congress and its allies talk of the Constitution these days; “these are the people who imposed the Emergency suspending operation of the Constitution. During the 1984 riots, they did not remember the Constitution when Sikhs were being killed,” he said.

He said the vote-bank politics of Congress and the INDI alliance has hurt the nation heavily. Due to this, the Congress could not assert India’s rights over Kartarpur Sahib at the time of the country’s Partition. For their vote bank, they kept opposing the Ram Temple and is opposing the CAA also, he said.

The Congress is the mother of corruption, he said. For 60 years under its governments, the Congress was busy in corruption, it appears it has done a double Ph.D in corruption. Without naming Punjab’s ruling party, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), he said there is another party coming close to the Congress and has shown it is corrupt from its birth.

The two parties pretend fighting each other in Punjab but they are together in Delhi, Mr Modi said. The Congress took 60 years to do a Ph.D in corruption but the AAP is corrupt from its birth. The party had promised to make Punjab drugs-free, but instead made drugs a source of income and forced the State into gang wars.

It now appears to be taking a lead in women’s harassment, he said. Delhi’s liquor scandal is known. The mining mafia is operating without fear. Industry and farming are ruined.

Mr Modi said Punjab is the land of the brave and daring, but the INDI alliance people have been insulting the Indian Army. These people sought proof from the Army on surgical strikes. They had given a clean chit to China on its 1962 aggression on India during then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s term in office.

He said the Congress and the INDI alliance never left any effort to weaken the Indian Army. Instead of providing the latest arms and ammunition to the Army, these people since Independence indulged in scams like the Jeep scandal, the Bofors scandal, the submarine scandal, and the truck scandal. They never thought of making the Army stronger but made plans to loot and steal.

He said the Congress put the Tejas fighter plane manufacture project on the backburner and for years delayed the constitution of the CDS post for integration of the armed forces. The party spoke lies on the One Rank One Pension issue for 40 years. The Prime Minister said these people had delayed necessary reforms for modernization of the Army.

On the eve of the 2014 election, the Congress spread wrong information that its government had taken action on the One Rank One Pension, he said. The Congress government had provided just Rs 500 crores for this. This was meaningless.

“When I implemented it, I deposited Rs 1.25 lakh crore in accounts of ex-Army personnel,” he said. Modi’s target is to make the Indian Army the most modern and capable and self-dependent but as this would give the INDI alliance no chance to make money, they are showering anger on him, he said.

The prime minister said, “I have been around the whole country; people have made up their minds to elect the Modi government for its third term. The country has new aspirations, new expectations, and a new sense of confidence. After decades, a Central government with a full majority is to register a hat trick. The major reason for this is the dream of Viksit Bharat (developed India).