'Unbelievable,' says BJP after Rahul accuses it of excluding minorities from development process

The BJP was on Thursday quick to latch on to Congress President Rahul Gandhi's comments made in Hamburg, Germany on Wednesday. 

On Twitter, BJP spokesman Sambit Patra said Gandhi's comments had been "unbelievable". 

"He’s a PM aspirant??" Patra added. 

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Gandhi, who is on a visit to Germany and the UK, had been speaking at the Bucerius Summer School in Hamburg on Wednesday. 

There, he had accused the BJP of excluding tribal, Dalits, and minorities from the development process. 

"It is very dangerous in the 21st century to exclude people. If you don't give people a vision in the 21st century somebody else will give them one," PTI quoted Rahul as saying. 

"And that's the real risk of excluding a large number of people from our development processes," Rahul added. 

He added that demonetisation and a badly-implemented GST had wrecked farm incomes and small businesses, leaving people angry. And that the recent spate of lynchings was a result of that. 

Gandhi then went on to give an example from America's invasion of Iraq. After the invasion, he said, the people in power decided not to give government and army jobs to one particular tribe. 

It seemed like an "innocuous" decision at the time, Gandhi said. But the people from that tribe went on to become militants — which finally led to the creation of ISIS. 

Patra was quick to latch on to that.  

"Horrified to hear Congress President RahulG justifying the formation of ISIS in Syria... and giving out a veiled threat that if Modiji doesn’t 'give vision' to India then soon someone else (read ISIS) would give the vision... Unbelievable... He’s a PM aspirant?" he said on Twitter. 

Later, at a press conference, he accused Gandhi of belittling the country's minorities, and said the Congress President must come up with an explanation.