Claim vs reality: What Modi accuses Congress of, and what party manifesto says

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been pillorying the Congress and its leadership over the last few days on what the former claims are contents of the grand old party’s manifesto for the ongoing Lok Sabha polls.

Modi’s allegations against the Congress have ranged from suggesting that the party plans to reinstate inheritance tax – abolished by the erstwhile Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government in 1985 – and seize the wealth, including ‘mangalsutra’ of married Hindu women, of every citizen and redistribute it to the country’s Muslims to claims that, if voted to power, the GOP would dilute the current reservation available to Dalits to accommodate Muslims.

The Congress has evidently been forced to respond to the prime minister’s diatribe, more so since nothing that Modi has claimed is either part of the party’s poll manifesto nor has been articulated by its leadership as an agenda of a future Congress-led government.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has also written to the prime minister, stating that while he is “neither shocked nor surprised” over the latter’s recent outbursts, he would be “more than happy to meet you in person to explain our Nyay Patra (the title of the Congress manifesto) so that as the prime minister of the country you don’t make any statements that are false”.

To put the raging controversy stoked by Modi into perspective, here is a comparative analysis of what the prime minister has been alleging at his poll rallies and what the Congress manifesto actually promises.

Modi’s claim: “The Congress says that it will impose an inheritance tax, and it will also impose tax on the inheritance received from parents. Your children will not get the wealth that you accumulate through your hard work, rather the claws of the Congress will snatch it away from you.”

What Congress manifesto says: The Congress manifesto makes no mention of reinstating inheritance tax in any form. In fact, page 31 of the manifesto which outlines the party’s vision on “Taxation and Tax Reforms” states, among other things:

1. “Congress will maintain stable personal income tax rates throughout its term. This will ensure that the salaried class is not subjected to rising tax rates and have clarity to plan their finances over the medium-to-long period.”

2. “We will eliminate Angel Tax and all other exploitative tax schemes...”

3. “Congress will lessen the burden of tax on MSMEs owned by individuals and partnership firms.”

4. “We will end the duplicitous cess raj of the Modi government...”

5. “Congress will replace the GST laws enacted by the BJP/NDA government with GST 2.0. The new GST regime will be based on the universally accepted principle that GST shall be a single, moderate rate (with a few exceptions) that will not burden the poor.”

6. “GST will not be levied on agricultural inputs.”

The controversy over inheritance tax, however, isn’t entirely of Modi’s making. The prime minister’s allegations stem from an infelicitous remark made by key Rahul Gandhi advisor, Sam Pitroda, during an interview to news agency ANI.

“In America, there is an inheritance tax. If one has $100 million worth of wealth and when he dies, he can only transfer probably 45 percent to his children and 55 percent goes to 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. 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,” Pitroda had said.

Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh and media department head Pawan Khera have since clarified that Pitroda had expressed a “personal view that is not shared by the party” and that the “Congress manifesto does not mention inheritance tax in any form”.

Additionally, Ramesh has quoted news reports from the early years of the Modi government’s first tenure to claim that “it was actually the BJP that has been propagating an inheritance tax” and that suggestions to this effect were “made by late Arun Jaitley (former Union finance minister), former minister of state for finance Jayant Sinha, Amit Malviya (chief of the BJP’s IT Cell) and other intellectuals of the BJP”.

Modi’s claim: “The Congress wants to survey your personal wealth, property, houses, shops, and land, and give it away. And who will they give it to? To the same people about whom Manmohan Singh had said that ‘Muslims have the first claim on the country’s resources’.” He also claimed that “the Congress will not even spare the mangalsutra of my mothers and sisters... they will even take away your mangalsutra”.

What Congress manifesto says: Though the Congress manifesto does promise that the party will “conduct a nation-wide Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) to enumerate the caste and sub-castes and their socio-economic conditions” and that “based on the data, we will strengthen the agenda for affirmative action”, nowhere does it mention any plan for redistribution of wealth.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, former party president Rahul Gandhi and other senior leaders have repeatedly called out Modi’s claims as “lies”.

Speaking at a convention for Social Justice in Delhi, on April 24, Rahul asserted that his party is committed to conducting an SECC, which he called his “life’s mission”, and said that such a survey will “provide an X-Ray of the social and economic conditions of every citizen... how much wealth you have, your education level, who owns how much land...”

“Our manifesto gives a political direction for the X-Ray; for correcting the income inequality. We have calculated and proposed how much we think should be given to the poor, the Dalits, the adivasis, the OBCs, those who are economically weak, in the interest of justice. Modi has waived off taxes and loans of the rich amounting to 16 lakh crore. What we have proposed to give as financial support (to the abovementioned people) is only a fraction of that money. I have not said we will give all the money (presumably collected from tax recoveries) but only a small fraction of the money which we think serves the cause of justice,” Rahul said at the event.

Modi’s claim: “Congress's thinking has always been of appeasement and vote bank politics. As soon as the Congress government came to power at the Centre in 2004, its first task was to try to provide reservation to Muslims by reducing SC/ST reservations in Andhra Pradesh. This was a pilot project that Congress wanted to try in the entire country.”

“Between 2004 and 2010, Congress tried four times to implement Muslim reservations in Andhra Pradesh. However, due to legal hurdles and awareness of the Supreme Court, they could not fulfil his plans. In 2011, Congress tried to implement it across the country. They snatched the rights given to SC/ST and OBC and gave them to others for vote bank politics.”

“They want to grant reservation to one section of the society by cutting into the quotas meant for Dalits and backward classes, which is completely against the Constitution. The reservation rights that Dr Babasaheb gave to Dalits, backward classes, and tribals, the Congress and the INDI Alliance want to give them to specific minorities based on religion.”

What Congress manifesto says: Pages 6 and 7 of the party manifesto list 23 promises of the party under the title of “Equity”.

Nowhere in this chapter or any other chapter of the manifesto, does the Congress propose carving out separate reservation for Muslims or for any other religious minority. In fact, the Congress manifesto does not even feature the word ‘Muslim’, not even in the section titled “Religious and Linguistic Minorities”

Besides conducting a nationwide socio-economic and caste census, other promises listed under the Equity chapter include:

1. “Congress guarantees that it will pass a constitutional amendment to raise the 50% cap on reservations for SC, ST and OBC.”

2. “The reservation of 10% in jobs and educational institutions for Economically Weaker Sections will be implemented for all castes and communities without discrimination.”

The section titled “Religious and Linguistic Minorities” lists, among other promises:

1. “We will respect and uphold the fundamental right to practice one’s faith and the rights guaranteed to religious minorities under Articles 15, 16, 25, 26, 28, 29 and 30 of the Constitution.”

2. “We will also respect and uphold the rights of linguistic minorities guaranteed under Articles 15, 16, 29 and 30 of the Constitution.”

3. “The economic empowerment of minorities is a necessary step for India to realise its full potential. We will ensure that banks will provide institutional credit to minorities without discrimination.”

4. “We will ensure that minorities receive their fair share of opportunities in education, healthcare, public employment, public works contracts, skill development, sports and cultural activities without discrimination.”

5. “We will encourage reform of personal laws. Such reform must be undertaken with the participation and consultation of the communities concerned.”

Modi’s claim: Though not directly linked with the Congress manifesto, Modi has also alleged that the Rajiv Gandhi-led government’s decision to scrap inheritance tax in 1985 was essentially taken to allow the former prime minister to inherit the property of his late mother, who was assassinated a year earlier.

“When former PM Indira Gandhi died, her children were going to inherit her property but there was a rule earlier which required that before property goes to the children, some part of it is taken by the government. Congress had formulated a law on this. To save the property from going to the government, Rajiv Gandhi scrapped inheritance law,” Modi said on April 25.

What Congress says: The Congress has hit back by reminding Modi that Indira Gandhi had donated all her immovable property in Allahabad, almost all of it inherited from her father and the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, to the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund back in 1970, almost 15 years before her death.

Rajiv’s daughter and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi has also said that Indira had “donated all her jewellery to the country”, which the Indian government was trying to raise funds during the country’s war with China in 1962.