Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday reacted to the controversy over his visit to the house of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud on September 11. Hitting out at the Congress for questioning him for participating in the Ganesh Puja at the CJI's home, PM Modi said: "The British followed a policy of divide and rule and used to hate Ganesh Utsav. Even today, the power-hungry people who are busy in dividing and breaking the society have a problem with Ganesh Puja. You must have seen that the people of Congress and its ecosystem are angry because I participated in Ganesh Puja."
Congress leader Pawan Khera on September 12 took a dig at PM Modi, saying that he is known to drop in at events uninvited. Referring to his 2016 visit to Pakistan on Nawaz Sharif's birthday to wish him, Pawan Khera said: "The Prime Minister has a habit of going to places uninvited. He also went to Pakistan without an invitation... We don't know whether he was invited [to CJI Chandrachud's home] or not, or who were on the invitees' list."
Addressing a public meeting in Odisha on Tuesday, PM Modi said: "Ganesh Utsav is not just a festival of faith for our country. Ganesh Utsav played a very important role in the independence of our country. When the British were trying to divide the country in their hunger for power, making the country fight on the basis of castes, poisoning the society, divide and rule became their weapon... Then Lokmanya Tilak awakened the soul of India through public events of Ganesh Utsav. Our religion teaches us to unite by rising above high and low, discrimination."