With the description of people from the North-East as “immigrants” in the BJP’s Vision Document for Delhi snowballing into a major controversy, BJP leaders led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday sought to cap the controversy by admitting its mistake.
Addressing a rally here on the penultimate day of campaigning for the Delhi Assembly elections, Mr. Modi said efforts were on to incite “our brothers and sisters from the North-East” even after the party had accepted its mistake.
“The words were wrongly put in and the party has accepted its mistake. I can see that attempts are being made to incite our brothers and sisters from the North-East for the last two days. No attempt should be made to harm the unity of this country.”
Referring to his travels in the North-East in the recent past, the Prime Minister said development in the region has not happened in the last 60 years. “I want to assure you that it will be done.” Earlier in the day, the BJP put out a press release on ‘Clarification for Printing Mistake...’ and several party leaders, including Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad weighed in. Stating that the “inadvertent mistake” had been corrected by reprinting the chapter relating to people from the North-East in the Vision Document, he said: “The BJP has firmly believed our North-Eastern brothers and sisters are proud citizens of India. And we have always walked an extra mile to ensure their protection.”
With the controversy refusing to die down – especially on social media platforms -- the Delhi unit of the BJP tweeted in the evening: “We accepted that it was typo mistake mentioning North-East people as immigrants. AAP and Congress made hue and cry over this but both of Congress, AAP didn’t mention anything for people from North East in their manifesto. Are they not concerned about them? We are!”
