New Delhi: The Congress was trying to wreck the culture of saving for future generations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Wednesday, picking on party’s senior leader Sam Pitroda’s recent support for an inheritance tax.
Addressing an election rally in Surguja, Chhattisgarh, Modi said the panja (hand) of the Congress would snatch away from children the wealth people accumulate with “hard work”, alleging the Opposition party planned to tax family bequests.
“The mantra of Congress is, ‘loot zindagi ke saath bhi aur zindagi ke baad bhi (Congress will loot you in your life and beyond it),” Modi said, echoing the popular tagline of the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC).
The Prime Minister told his audience that the Congress would impose higher taxes on people even when they are alive. “… And when you are no longer alive, it will impose the burden of inheritance tax on you. Those people who considered the entire Congress Party as their ancestral property and gave it to their children, now do not want Indians to give their property to their children,” he said, indirectly attacking the Nehru-Gandhi family.
Referring to Pitroda and Rahul, Modi said, “An adviser to the royal family’s prince and his father had earlier said that more taxes should be imposed on the middle class. Now, they have gone a step further. The Congress says it will also impose inheritance tax… or tax the inheritance received from parents.”
The PM said the principal Opposition party was keeping an eye on people’s “earnings, house, shop and fields”. “The Prince of Congress says he will X-ray every house and every cupboard in the country,” he told the rally.
Modi further said Wednesday that the Congress wanted to loot people’s reservations, and that their intentions were not in accordance with the Constitution or social justice. “If anyone can protect your reservation, it is the BJP,” he said.
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Pitroda says US law on inheritance ‘interesting’
In an interview to news agency ANI this week, Sam Pitroda, who heads the overseas wing of the Congress, had given the example of inheritance tax in the US and suggested there should be a debate on this in India too.
Highlighting American laws where the government can tax up to 50 percent of one’s inheritance, he remarked: “In America… if one has $100 million worth of wealth, when he dies, he can only transfer probably 45 percent to his children… 55 percent is grabbed by the government.”
The senior leader felt this was an “interesting law”, adding: “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… 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 programmes that are in the interest of the people and not in the interest of the super-rich only,” Pitroda added.
Though Pitroda was quick to post a clarification, his comments had given enough ammunition to the BJP for its campaign in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
Pitroda said in his defence that his remarks were twisted to deflect attention from core issues. He added that what he said as an individual was being misused by “Godi Media” to divert attention from the “lies” the Prime Minister had spread about the Congress manifesto. He said on X that Modi’s comments on the mangalsutra and gold-snatching were “simply unreal”.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, too, tried to salvage the situation via an X post, saying Pitroda “expresses his opinion freely” and they “don’t always reflect the position” of the party.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Congress issued a clarification over Pitroda’s remarks, terming it as his “personal opinion”.
But that has not stopped the BJP top brass from amplifying the issue, with Union Home Minister Amit Shah telling ANI that the Congress now stood exposed. “They want to survey the private property of the people of the country, put it in government property and distribute it as per decisions taken during UPA’s regime. Congress should either withdraw it from their manifesto or accept that it is indeed their intention.”
BJP leader Amit Malviya also took to X to call this the Congress’s “destructive” intention if voted to power.
“Congress has decided to destroy India. Now, Sam Pitroda advocates 50% inheritance tax for wealth redistribution. This means 50% of whatever we build, with all our hard work and enterprise, will be taken away. 50%, besides all the tax we pay, which too will go up, if the Congress prevails,” he wrote on X.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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