‘Rajiv scrapped inheritance tax to save Indira’s wealth from going to govt’
MORENA: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said then-PM Rajiv Gandhi abolished the inheritance tax after his mother Indira Gandhi’s death in 1984 to save her wealth from going to the government, and alleged the Congress now wants to bring back the levy.
As the high-decibel canvassing for Lok Sabha polls sent political temperatures soaring, the BJP’s star campaigner doubled down on his wealth redistribution and inheritance tax charge at the Congress and vowed to protect people’s from what he called the rival party’s plans to loot them.
Addressing a rally in Madhya Pradesh’s Morena, where voting will take place on May 7, Modi escalated his attack on the grand old party and accused it of “cutting off the country’s hands” by accepting Partition
on the basis of religion.
Modi said then-PM Rajiv Gandhi abolished the inheritance tax, a levy imposed on inherited movable and immovable assets, in 1985 after his mother Indira Gandhi’s death to save her wealth from going to the government.
“Listen with your ears wide open about the sins the Congress has committed. I want to put forth an interesting fact. When sister Indira Gandhi passed away, there was a law by virtue of which half of the wealth used to go to the government. There were talks then that
Indiraji willed her wealth in her son Rajiv Gandhi’s name,” Modi told the gathering. “To save the money going to the government, the then-PM Rajiv Gandhi abolished the inheritance tax,” the BJP stalwart opined.
If the main opposition party comes to power, it will snatch more than half of people’s earnings through inheritance tax, the PM warned voters, latching onto controversial remarks on the issue made by US-based senior Congress leader Sam Pitroda.
A day after MP Rahul Gandhi’s remark that those who call themselves “deshbhakt” (patriots) are scared of a caste census, Modi said the Congress wants to confiscate people’s jewellery and small savings by conducting an X-ray of their properties and valuables. An adviser to the opposition party’s ‘shehzada’ (referring to Rahul Gandhi) has now suggested imposition of an inheritance tax, he said, seizing on Pitroda’s remarks.
The Congress wants tobring back the inheritance tax now that after its four generations have reaped the benefit of the wealth passed on to them, he said.