Row over PM’s remark avoidable: PMO

NEW DELHI: Taking exception at media reports on the Prime Minister’s statement on minorities at the National Development Council meeting, the Prime Minister’s Office on Sunday called it a piece of “deliberate and mischievous misinterpretation” that created an “avoidable controversy”.

“The Prime Minister’s observations have also been quoted out of context in some sections of the electronic media, fuelling a baseless controversy,” said a statement issued by the PMO.

The statement said the PM’s reference to the first claim on resources referred to all the priority areas, including programmes for the uplift of SCs, STs, OBCs, women and children and minorities.

The PMO urged the media to publish the full text of the paragraph in which the PM referred to the issue of minority empowerment to clarify the matter: “I believe our collective priorities are clear: agriculture, irrigation and water resources, health, education, critical investment in rural infrastructure, and the essential public investment needs of general infrastructure, along with programmes for the upliftment of SC/STs, other backward classes, minorities and women and children. The component plans for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will need to be revitalised. We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources. The Centre has a myriad other responsibilities whose demands will have to be fitted within the over-all resource availability.”