BJP’s efforts to tamper with Constitution not new: Congress

Congress critiques BJP's tampering with Constitution, vows to raise reservation cap, and makes Constitution central to 2024 campaign.

Flagging a November 1949 edition of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-linked publication Organiser, which while critiquing the Constitution lamented that it ignored Indian legal texts such as the Manusmriti, the Congress on Wednesday said the BJP’s efforts to tamper with the Constitution were not new. The party also asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to clear his stance on whether he would remove the 50% cap on reservation for the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, and the Other Backward Classes.

Meanwhile, senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi urged all party candidates to carry a copy of the Constitution with them while filing nomination papers, and at public meetings and outreach programmes. Mr. Gandhi himself has been carrying around a copy while addressing election rallies.

The Congress has made the Constitution the centre piece of its 2024 campaign, framing the electoral contest as a battle to save it.

At a press conference at the party’s headquarters in Delhi, Congress general secretary (communication) Jairam Ramesh accused Mr. Modi of giving a “communal colour” to the debate. Mr. Modi has repeatedly targeted the Opposition party in his election speeches, saying that the Congress government in Karnataka had spliced up the reservation quota meant for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes to extend it to Muslims.

“The Congress guarantees that it will pass a constitutional amendment to raise the 50% cap on reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs. I want to ask the Prime Minister, who wants to give a communal colour to our Nyay Patra and wants to mislead, whether he will remove the cap of 50% reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs,” Mr. Ramesh said.

The 400-seat target that Mr. Modi has set for the BJP and its allies, the Congress leader said, was to tamper with the Constitution and this he said was not their first attempt at it. He quoted an article that he claimed was published in the Organiser on November 30, 1949.

“The worst thing about the new Constitution of Bharat is that there is nothing Bharatiya about it. The drafters of the Constitution have incorporated in it elements of British, American, Canadian, Swiss and other Constitutions... Manu’s Laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day, his laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti, excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing,” he quoted the article as saying.