Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday that the Supreme Court’s rejection of petitions against the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in elections was a strong “slap” on parties like the Congress which for decades deprived the poor, dalits and OBCs of their voting rights by “loot” of polling booths and ballot papers.

Addressing a BJP election rally in Araria, Bihar, Mr Modi attacked the Congress Party on the reservation issue also, and said after the OBCs, the Congress could target the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to take a part of their reservation benefit and give it to its favourite vote bank of Muslims.

The Congress, Mr. Modi said was persisting with its policy of giving reservation on the basis of religion, in spite of the fact it was prohibited by the Constitution, and Supreme Court had given a ruling against it.

He said an old video of Congress Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had come out on Friday and exposed the party’s policy and belief that the first claim on the nation’s resources was of the Muslims. The exposure of the video had made silent all those questioning his earlier reference to the Congress policy, he said.

For its vote bank politics, the Congress Party “discriminated” against the Hindus, and its thinking is now exposed, the Prime Minister said. This time also, the Muslim League-inspired election manifesto of the Congress shows that for grabbing power, it can even go against the Constitution.

The Congress wants to implement its Karnataka model of giving reservation to the Muslims, all over the country, he said. As per this model, the Congress will take a part of the 27 per cent quota of the OBCs, and give it to the Muslims.

For this, the party played a trick, he said. Just one night, the Congress government in Karnataka brought all castes of Muslims, whether rich or well placed, under the OBC category and passed on a sizable part of the OBCs’ reservation quota to the Muslims.

This was just a “dacoity” on the rights of the OBCs, he said. Now the Congress wants to do it in Bihar, and the RJD is fully supporting the party. The RJD has not spoken a word about this sin of the Congress, Mr Modi said.

“Will you allow this loot of the OBCs’ reservation, will you allow a dacoity on the OBCs right, will you let your right go. Today, they are targeting the OBCs; tomorrow the Congress and the RJD can do this with the SCs and the STs,” he said.

“I want to alert you on this. These parties are so deep in the mud of appeasement, that the Constitution or Ambedkar’s views do not matter for them,” he said.

He said Congress PM Manmohan Singh’s Cabinet in 2011 had cleared a proposal to take the OBCs’ quota, and give it to the party’s vote bank on the basis of religion. At that time, a “vigilant” Supreme Court had stopped it from being implemented.

In his belief, he said, the first claim on the nation’s resources was of the poor, the toiling workers, farm labour and women living in poverty, irrespective of the religion they belonged to.

The prime minister said the RJD-Congress INDI alliance neither cares for the country’s Constitution nor democracy. People in Bihar have seen it how during the RJD-Congress rule, the ballot papers were looted, the poor were not even allowed to come out of their homes to cast votes. The Dalits and backward classes people were threatened by lathis not to dare leaving their homes.

The EVMs had come as a big relief to the poor and honest voters, he said, but the powerful parties which used to loot the booths on the polling days, and swell the number of their votes by unfair means, were unable to accept this. They kept trying to get the EVMs scrapped by committing the sin of creating doubts in the minds of people.

“Now, these people have got a big slap in the Supreme Court ruling and they will not be able to show their faces chins up. Today is an auspicious day, a day of victory for democracy,” the Prime Minister said. He said all INDI alliance leaders should apologise to people for their acts.

The prime minister said the Congress-RJD alliance had made lives of people in Bihar miserable. The RJD took lands of the poor for jobs. If somebody was well-off, there could be abductions. This was the kind of life during their “jungle raj.” With great labour, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, BJP and NDA partners worked hard to lift Bihar out of that jungle raj, he said.