Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is the in-charge of the Bharatiya Janata Party for Gujarat, on Saturday accused the opposition Congress of spreading the 'poison of casteism' in the society.
Referring to the ongoing 'Vikas gando thai gayo chhe' campaign on social media, Jaitley said it was strange that the Congress looked down upon development. “When this did not help, the Congress is spreading the poison of casteism in the society,” said the minister while addressing a press meet in Ahmedabad.
“Development is our foremost agenda in Gujarat, and we aim to make it socially and economically prosperous. While we have a galaxy of leadership to support this, the Congress is solely focused on one member of its family," he said.
The BJP leader said that dividing the society was not in the interest of the state, and added that the party would score a big victory in the upcoming assembly elections. Gujarat goes to polls in two phases on December 9 and 14.
"The Congress party is adopting wrong methods to fight the election and taking after Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in using anti-national tactics which are harmful for the progress of the nation. Their corrupt approach to winning the elections is very dangerous for the progress of the state and the nation in general," said Jaitley.
Replying to a question about Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's critical campaign about GST, Jaitley said the former 'does not understand GST'. Jaitley claimed that finance ministers of Congress ruled states were also part of the decision of implementing the GST.
The finance minister said that the GST was being praised all over the world and that it would bring in a lot of opportunities. In an apparent reference to the UPA I and UPA II, Jaitley said the Congress rule of 10 years had witnessed rampant corruption and policy paralysis. He also claimed that the Congress had never carried out a campaign against black money.
"In the ten years of Congress leadership, they have done nothing to curb black money or corruption, apart from a few minor policies here and there. Everyone knows that under their governance, there was rampant corruption and policy paralysis in India. The economic reforms taken are to curb the black money menace and squeeze funding to terrorists, and also to promote digitisation," said the minister.
(With inputs from agencies)
