New Delhi, September 10: Setting the tone for the 2019 Lok Sabha General Election with slogans “Ajaye Bharat” and “Atal BJP”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today targeted the Opposition for its “opportunistic” efforts to build an “ideology-less mahagathbandhan”.
Attacking the Congress and the “family”, but without naming anyone, he also said that many within the party were not ready to accept the leadership, let alone the people of the country.
“No one is ready to accept the leadership of Congress. Many think it is not capable of giving leadership,” Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, quoting the PM’s address at the valedictory session of the BJP’s two-day national executive.
He slammed the “mahagathbandhan” — the anti-BJP formation that Opposition parties are trying to put together for these elections —as a “clueless, leaderless and ideology-less formation”.
“Mahagathbandhan — netritva ka pata nahi, neeti aspasht, neeyat bhrasht. Those who cannot see eye to eye, have no political or logical understanding of working with each other are thinking of a ‘mahagathbandhan’. This is the biggest victory of the BJP, it means people have accepted us and our programmes,” the PM said. He asked BJP leaders to counter Congress’ “lies and falsehood” with “facts and figures”.
While the PM declared that he saw no challenge to his party from anyone, party chief Amit Shah told the top leadership at the executive that “once the BJP wins 2019 (elections), it will remain unvanquished for the next 50 years”.
“We have to contact 22 crore families, in other words the entire population of the country. We have a corpus of nine crore members and the capability to directly contact 36 crore Indians through them.
“After we win 2019, no one can remove us for the next 50 years.
This we are not saying with any arrogance, but on the basis of our work. Modiji has never lost an election since he first contested in 2001 in Gujarat,” Shah said
Significantly, the important meeting a day before the “Bharat Bandh” called by the Opposition against rising fuel prices found no mention either in its political resolution (Vision 2022 document) or speeches.
The BJP, which normally issues an economic resolution at such meetings, passed a political resolution and documents related to the government’s pro-farmer steps, the NRC and the Citizen Amendment Bill that it is trying to push through ahead of 2019 poll. The political resolution said while the Prime Minister was building an India of “no poverty, casteism, corruption and communalism”, the sole agenda of a “rattled and frustrated” Opposition was “roko Modi” (stop Modi).
As per Prasad, the “political resolution blended the essence of the economic resolution. This time focus was on political resolution and the National Register of Citizens (NRC)”. The BJP, he said, was completely “committed to the NRC, the illegal infiltration should stop. The issue (regarding price rise) has already been clarified by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan”.
Earlier, briefing on the political resolution, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said “inflation was over 10 per cent under the UPA and around 5 per cent under the Modi government”.
There was also no mention on the unrest among upper classes over a recent parliamentary amendment overturning a Supreme Court order on the SC/ST Act or the BJP’s long-pending pet poll plank—a grand Ram temple at Ayodhya.
Source Tribune India
