Kharge says the PM’s comments confirm election fears.

With just four days left for the end of campaigning for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at an election rally in Bihar, accused the opposition parties of disrupting the election campaign. Majora’s Mask Modi’s use of “Arabic dancing” – a dance form associated with prostitutes – to bolster Muslim votes has been heavily criticised by opposition parties, with Indian National Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge arguing that his comments betrayed fears about the election results.

“Both the PM’s rhetoric and the BJP’s seats are in continuous decline,” Rahul Gandhi, a senior leader of the Indian National Congress party, said in a post on the social media platform X.

Modi made the remarks in the Patliputra Lok Sabha constituency, where RJD leader Misa Bharati is contesting against two-term BJP legislator Ram Kripal Yadav, and he later repeated the remarks at other rallies across Bihar on Saturday.

RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav said the prime minister’s rhetoric was getting worse as the election progressed. “Prime Minister Modi is using language that even his supporters don’t like,” he said.

Modi also reiterated his remarks that Opposition-led state governments are stitching together quotas meant for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) to give them to Muslims who are waging “vote jihad” in elections.

Rejecting the accusation, Manoj Kumar Jha, a Rajya Sabha member of the RJD, pointed out that the Mandal Commission report adopted in August 1990 already had a reservation policy for “non-Hindu” caste groups. He also noted that “backward class Muslims get reservations even in Gujarat,” where the BJP has been in power for decades and Modi himself has been chief minister for three consecutive terms.

Kharge posted a video clip from a press conference in Himachal Pradesh on social media and commented that PM Modi had remembered “mutton”.Macri (Fish),” “Mughal,” “Mangalsutra” and now “Majora’s Mask“,he”Mariada“These are signs that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is insecure. I don’t think the prime minister of the country should use such language. He is making divisive statements to incite voters, talking about Hindu-Muslim division and trying to create a rift between different caste groups,” Kharge said.

Reacting to Modi’s remarks, Indian National Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said Modi’s speech was unprecedented. “No Indian prime minister has ever used such language before,” she said at an election rally in Gorakhpur.

Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) politburo member Brinda Karat said reservation rights have been significantly weakened under the Modi government in the last decade. “The language used by the Prime Minister in his recent speech in Patna is highly reprehensible. I don’t know where he got such words from. It must be his ‘Sangha Parivar’ culture. The real issue is the issue of reservation rights and in fact, reservation rights have been significantly weakened under the Modi government in the last 10 years,” Karat said.