Modi invokes Ambedkar, breaks silence on quota row

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said his government supported reservation policy for the socially backward sections.

Ahead of the first phase of the Bihar Assembly elections on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said.
“Whenever polls approach, opposition begins a debate on reservation,” Modi firmly ruled out a rethink on the reservation policy.

The RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had recently favoured a re-look at the reservations in the backdrop of agitations launched by Patels in Gujarat.

On Sunday, after laying the foundation stone for a memorial to Dr B.R. Ambedkar at an event boycotted by the Shiv Sena. Modi said addressing at a well-attended public meeting that .”Every time when a BJP government is in power, a group of liars spreads the malicious propaganda that we are out to scrap reservations…It happened during the Atal Bihari Vajapayee government’s time as well.”

Modi said,”This falsehood must stop. Terrorising society must end. This is not politics.”

“This is something which Babasaheb Ambedkar has given us and no power can take it away,” he said. Mr Modi said Ambedkar faced many challenges in life but harboured no bitterness and never sought revenge when he had the opportunity to draw up the future of India as an “architect” of the Constitution.

Giving a personal touch, he said: “If Ambedkar had not been there, where this Modi would be.” “I don’t want to indulge in politics, but it is a fact that a portrait of Ambedkar, who gave us the Constitution, could adorn Parliament only after a BJP-supported government came to power,” Mr Modi said.