Poor didn't get their due in 70 years of Congress rule, backward classes were suppressed, claims Amit Shah

Pali: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah on Sunday said that the Congress ruled India for 70 years but failed to give the poor and the backward people their due.

File photo of BJP president Amit Shah. Twitter@AmitShah

Addressing the Other Backward Classes Sammelan, the first rally on day one of his three-day visit to poll-bound Rajasthan, Shah said: "Congress president Rahul Gandhi's great grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, grandmother Indira Gandhi, father Rajiv Gandhi and mother Sonia Gandhi ruled India for 70 years. Yet they did not give the poor and the backward people their due rights."

The BJP chief also accused the Congress of suppressing the backward classes and said that it was the National Democratic Alliance government that passed the backward class commission for the welfare of the concerned section.

Shah added that the Congress party wants to keep the illegal immigrants in the country, while the BJP has pledged to weed them out. "The Congress party wants to keep infiltrators in the country, whereas we have pledged to evict each and every infiltrator from India," he said.

Shah's remark came on the ongoing controversy on the release of the second and final draft of the National Register of Citizens in Assam, which left out the names of nearly 40 lakh people. Ever since the final draft was released, the Opposition has been cornering the Centre for the exclusion of the applicants from the list.

This is the BJP chief's second visit to Rajasthan in a month. On 11 September, he had addressed four programmes in Jaipur.

Rajasthan is slated to go for polls later this year.