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‘300+ seats again’: Amit Shah sets pitch for 2022 UP
UP goes to the polls early next year and Amit Shah claimed his party has met “more than 90%” of the promises in its 2017 manifesto.
Union home minister Amit Shah set the tone for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections, coining the slogan “ek baar phir se 300 paar (once more 300+ seats)” and urged the people of the state to re-elect the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power and Yogi Adityanath as the chief minister in Uttar Pradesh.
UP goes to the polls early next year and Shah claimed his party has met “more than 90%” of the promises in its 2017 manifesto. “We need five more years to make UP the number one state in the country,” he added, emphasising the importance of the state to the party’s electoral prospects in 2024. If you want to see Narendra Modi as Prime Minister in 2024, he said “you have to make Yogi Adityanath UP CM in 2022”.
In the 2017 assembly polls, the BJP and its allies won 325 of the 403 seats in the state. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the party and its allies won 64 of the 80 seats in the state.
Shah was speaking at the launch of the party’s membership drive ‘Mera pariwar, bhajapa pariwar (my family, BJP family)’ in Lucknow on Friday.
Even as he lauded CM Adityanath’s handling of the Covid situation in the state, Shah lashed out at :Akhilesh and company”, “behenji”, and “Gandhi-Vadra pariwar” , the Samajwadi Party, Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress, the three other main players in the state.
“We have done a lot in these five years. But these political parties have left such big holes behind that filling them would require some more time. UP will set the stage for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. I have come here to appeal to you to give another chance to Modi ji and help make Yogi ji chief minister again and that is why we are saying, once more, go past 300 seats,” Shah said at a well-attended public meeting in Lucknow.
Twice during his address, Shah, who is expected to visit UP twice in November, urged the people to help make Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister again, an exhortation that did not go unnoticed within the party. Yogi Adityanath’s continuation, as the chief ministerial candidate ahead of the polls, was subject to much speculation in May-June.
Shah’s address was sprinkled with remarks on the Ayodhya Ram temple and the exodus of Hindus from Kairana in western UP in 2016, something which has been stopped, he said . He said the temple issue got a clear resolution under the leadership of PM Modi. “Kairana palayan se mere khoon kholta tha… par ab palayan karane wale ab palayan kar rahe (my blood boiled at the Kairana exodus.. but those who forced the exodus have now fled themselves)” he said. “UP is the land of Baba Vishwanath, the birthplace of Lord Ram and Krishna but for the first time since the Mughal rule, the state seems to have got its identity back,” he said.
Hailed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the “man of the match” for the party’s win in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, when BJP swept UP, Shah also launched the Modi 11 app, an online platform to help people connect with the party. He said that the BJP’s membership drive would continue till the end of the year. “We believe in family planning but we relax this definition when it comes to expanding our BJP family,” he added.
“Governments are not meant for family benefits. They are meant to help the poorest of the poor. We are willing to give an account of our term in power but Akhilesh babu, I surely would like to ask you how much time did you spend in a foreign land, where were you during Covid-19 and floods? These politicians and parties have worked for themselves, their families or at the most, their caste. But, the Modi government has worked for the poorest of the poor, Dalits, tribals, women, backwards.”
Reacting to Shah, Congress leader Zeeshan Haidar said: “In politics, one should be humble... The beauty of democracy is that people’s will is supreme. So one should not behave as if they are here forever...”
Professor Manuka Khanna of Lucknow University’s political science department said: “Predicting a clear cut winner is difficult but BJP appears to be well prepared for the battle at the hustings at the moment.”
Ajay Mishra shares stage
Union minister of state for home Ajay Mishra Teni, whose son Ashish Mishra is the main accused in the October 3 Lakhimpur Kheri violence, also shared the stage with Shah at the event.
While Mishra refused to comment on the case, he said: “That’s a satisfaction that none can say that I misused my position (to save his son).”
Criticising Mishra’s presence at the event, Haidar said: “This shows the hollowness of chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s claim that rule of law prevails in UP.”
