Cong, SP will bulldoze Ram temple: PM

Barabanki/Hamirpur (UP): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday claimed that the Congress and the SP will run a bulldozer over the Ram temple if elected to power, and asked them to take lessons from Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on where bulldozers should be used instead.

Addressing election rallies in Uttar Pradesh, Modi predicted that his government was set to return, scoring a hat-trick in the Lok Sabha elections. The Congress, according to him, had a mission to score just 50 seats to “save its honour”. The prime minister addressed public meetings in Barabanki, Fatehpur and Hamirpur. He accused the opposition INDIA bloc of planning to give their “vote bank” – meaning Muslims -- a big chunk of reservation in government jobs and education meant for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.

In Barabanki, he said the bloc was in the fray to create instability. “As elections progress, these 'INDI alliance' people have started collapsing like a pack of cards." He hit out at the Congress and the Samajwadi Party on the issue of the Ayodhya temple. "A senior SP leader had said on the day of Ram Navami that the Ram temple is useless.

At the same time, the Congress is preparing to overturn the Supreme Court's decision on the Ram temple,” he alleged. “If the SP and the Congress come to power, they will send Ram Lalla back to the tent and bulldoze the temple," he claimed while asking them to take "tuition" from Adityanath on where bulldozers should be used. The Adityanath government has been accused of using bulldozers to illegally raze property of alleged criminals, and the opposition has claimed that the victims are mostly Muslims. He maintained that "nothing is bigger than the vote bank” for the opposition allies.