PM Modi, Amit Shah tell BJP MPs from UP not to seek transfers of govt officials

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah instructed party MPs from Uttar Pradesh on Thursday to refrain from seeking favours or pressuring officials in a state crucial to the party’s ambitions of winning a second term in 2019.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah instructed party MPs from Uttar Pradesh on Thursday to refrain from seeking favours or pressuring officials in a state crucial to the party’s ambitions of retaining power in 2019.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left) and Amit Shah, the Bharatiya Janata Party president, wave to their supporters during a rally in this file photo.(Reuters File Photo)

At a breakfast meeting with the party’s 71 Lok Sabha MPs from the state, the two leaders asked the lawmakers to help the new UP government with development-related work.

“Let the officers work. If someone is doing any wrong, the state government will look into it,” Modi and Shah told BJP MPs at the first such meeting with parliamentarians from UP, according to sources.

The two leaders told lawmakers to not seek transfers and postings of government officials or put undue pressure or police and administration, sources said. They also stressed on good governance being the mantra of the new state government.

Sources said when Amroha MP Kanwar Singh Tanwar raised the issue of BJP supporters being arrested, Modi and Shah asserted that the law would take its own course and no favour would be extended to any culprit, merely because they were associated with the ruling party. Ballia MP Bharat Singh, too, raised the issue of party workers’ recommendations getting unheard.

Sources reported Modi and Shah as saying that it was the duty of every party worker to ensure no compromise on the issue of corruption and law and order . “Good governance should speak for itself,” the PM said, advising party leaders against talking to media out of turn.

Riding on Modi’s popularity and Shah’s poll management, the BJP swept to victory in India’s most-populous state earlier this month, consolidating the prime minister’s sway over national politics.

With the party ruling at the Centre and in the state, the BJP leadership has repeatedly cautioned its lawmakers against laxity that could cost it in the next election.

Winning UP again in the 2019 general election is crucial for the BJP if it has to return to power at the Centre. The BJP had built a campaign against nepotism and underdevelopment of UP under the previous Akhilesh Yadav government.

With chief minister Aditya Nath distributing portfolios to his minister on Wednesday evening, the BJP is trying to get a synergy between the Centre, states, elected representatives and the party to maintain the momentum that recent electoral victories have given it. The prime minister himself represents Varanasi in the Lok Sabha.