NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday slammed the Opposition Congress over its leader Sam Pitroda’s remarks calling for a debate on “inheritance law”, saying the only mantra of the grand old party is to loot people “zindagi ke sath bhi, zindagi ke baad bhi”.
“Now Congress says that it will impose Inheritance Tax, it will also impose tax on the inheritance received from parents. The property you have accumulated through your hard work will not be given to your children. The claws of Congress will snatch that too from you. The mantra of Congress is- ‘Congress ki loot… Zindagi ke sath bhi, Zindagi ke baad bhi’,” Modi said while addressing an election rally in Chhattisgarh.
Modi’s reaction came after Pitroda, the president of Indian Overseas Congress, allegedly advocated inheritance tax in India.
During a recent interview with a news agency, Pitroda had said, “In America, there is an inheritance tax. If one has 100 million USD worth of wealth and when he dies he can only transfer probably 45 per cent to his children, 55 per cent is grabbed by the government. That’s an interesting law. It says, you in your generation made wealth and you are leaving now, you must leave your wealth for the public, not all of it, half of it, which to me sounds fair,” he said.
“In India, you don’t have that. If somebody is worth 10 billion and he dies, his children get 10 billion and the public gets nothing…So these are the kinds of issues people will have to debate and discuss. When we talk about redistributing wealth, we are talking about new policies and new programs that are in the interest of the people and not in the interest of the super-rich only,” he added.
After his remarks, the BJP launched a coordinated attack on the Congress with several leaders, including PM Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma among others slamming the grand old party for its purported plan to “loot” people’s wealth accumulated after years of hard work.
Home Minister Shah said that Pitroda’s statement has completely exposed the Congress party.
“This statement has made the intention of the Congress clear that they want to survey the property of the people of the country and deposit their personal property in the government treasury and distribute it among the minorities, and among them Muslims, as per the priority they had set during the UPA regime that the first right on the resources of the country is of the minorities,” he said, adding “I believe that the Congress Party should either remove this from its manifesto or accept that this is its aim.”
Meanwhile, the Congress has distanced itself from Pitroda’s remarks, saying the views expressed are his personal and they don’t reflect the position of the party.
Agencies

  BJP, Congress, Election

Agencies