BJP to drag TIME mag to court for belittling Modi

Hyderabad: The BJP has decided to drag the TIME magazine to court and wage a legal battle against it for portraying Prime Minister Narendra Modi as "divider in chief."

Apart from it, the party would stage nation-wide protests against the magazine and the author of the story.

Party national manifesto sub-committee member Karuna Gopal said on Friday the BJP had condemned the article by a UK citizen, a Pakistani Muslim, who wrote the article.

The cover story said Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of the largest democracy in the world, was a divider of the people.

"We take serious objection to the tenor of the article and we will launch nationwide protest from Hyderabad on Friday, besides, filing a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) petition in the Supreme Court," she added.

She said that the article had portrayed Modi as communal bigot and divider. But the article was not based on any facts and even the facts referred to were distorted.

She said the party can show any number of examples to show how Modi had acted as a unifier, harmoniser and integrator.

For example, North-East was the most neglected part of the country prior to Modi becoming the Prime Minister, resulting in people feeling alienated.

But, in last four-and-half-years Modi had visited the North-East around 30 times, to give 'Look East' to 'Act East' policy.

Calling the eight States of the NE as Asta Lakshmi, the Modi's government was determined to increase the prosperity of the people there and had given a fillip to promoting infrastructure like airports, railways, roadways, telecom sector as well as the tourism sector, she added.

Similarly, the Jan Dhan Yojana brought 35 crore people into the banking network, Mudra Yojana provided Rs 6 lakh crore to 12 crore people, Ayushman Bharat covered one crore people and the Ujwala Scheme reached to lakhs of women.

The schemes benefitted Hindus, Muslims, Christian and all other sections of people in the country making him as a unifier trying to economically empower people.

Specifically, the housing projects benefitted predominantly the poor Christians in States like Meghalaya.

The development too place in the predominantly Bhendi Bazar in Mumbai started in 2015 benefitting Muslim population, she said.