Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday thanked the BJP for “confirming” that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not born in an Other Backward Class family, as he claimed earlier in the day.
Gandhi, while making a brief speech here on the third and concluding day of his ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’ in Odisha, said Modi was born in a family that belonged to the general caste.
“Modi ji has been misleading the people by saying that he is an OBC. He was born in a family of the ‘Ghanchi’ caste, which was included in the OBC list during the BJP government’s tenure in Gujarat in 2000.
“He changed his caste to OBC after becoming the CM of Gujarat. Therefore, Modi ji is not an OBC by birth,” the Congress MP asserted.
Union ministers Prahlad Joshi and Dharmendra Pradhan alleged that Gandhi has been spreading lies on this issue.
“The truth: Modi’s OBC status was recognised on Oct 27, 1999, two years before he became Gujarat’s Chief Minister. @INCIndia insults the OBC community yet again, but OBCs will deliver a resounding lesson in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls,” Joshi, the Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister, said in a post on X.
Soon after this, Rahul Gandhi also took to X and said: “Modi ji is not by birth but a ‘paper OBC’. He was not an OBC till five decades after his birth. Thanks to the BJP government for confirming this truth of mine.”