Amit Shah Interview: Home minister's 'sharia' dig at Congress's manifesto

Home Minister Amit Shah, in an exclusive interview with Network18.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah reiterated Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that the Congress manifesto bore the imprint of the Muslim League. Shah also accused the Congress of promoting personal laws and politics of appeasement.

Shah was speaking in an exclusive interview with Network18 Group Editor-in-Chief Rahul Joshi.  “Tell me, in this era, can any political party talk of personal laws? Will the country run on the basis of Sharia? On the one hand, in our manifesto, in our Sankalp Patra, we talk about bringing a Uniform Civil Code. Congress is saying that it will promote personal laws. The Congress must answer because this is a very important issue,” Shah said. The home minister also said the BJP had raised the manifesto issue to “expose the intentions of those contesting against it”.

“They are saying that for the contracts of the country, they will give priority to minorities. Who is the first lowest, what is the past performance, whether they have the capability to do the work or not, will contracts be decided on the basis of this or on the basis of religion? How do they want to run the country? The people of the country will have to decide. After a long time, Narendra Modi-ji has taken the country out of the politics of appeasement. They want to take it back in the same direction again because the Congress does not have the confidence to win,” said Shah.

He also said there was no ambiguity over where the resources would come from for distribution among minorities. “It comes from the statement of the then Prime Minister of the country, Manmohan Singh, which was a very famous statement that the minorities have the first right to the resources of this country, and among the minorities, particularly Muslims. Now when it comes to distributing wealth, it will be from resources only. The government will distribute it by taking people’s property. And I say that if this is not true, then the Congress party should clarify what this means,” Shah told News18.

Speaking on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s idea of a “nationwide X-Ray” to determine the socio-economic status of the people, Shah said,  “That’s his thinking. I think that such an old party has outsourced the making of its manifesto to minorities and people from the extreme Left.”

On Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “mangalsutras will be snatched” comment, Shah told News18 that the issue of wealth included people’s savings, property and “streedhan”.