Amit Shah keeps Kashmir poll issue in Maha

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah on Tuesday once again made it clear that Kashmir would remain a central poll plank in the Maharashtra Assembly polls

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah on Tuesday once again made it clear that Kashmir would remain a central poll plank in the Maharashtra Assembly polls on October 21.

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“You blessed Modi with 300 seats and within five months, he abrogated Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir to unite the entire country. Is Kashmir an integral part of India or not? Will you demand answers from those who are opposing the scrapping of Article 370,” Shah asked the huge gathering at Savargaon in Beed district of Marathwada, 418km from Mumbai.

He said that each person gathered at the rally must reach out to every home in their villages to spread the word about the achievement of having scrapped Article 370. He was speaking at the annual Dussehra rally organised by Maharashtra’s rural development minister Pankaja Munde, just like her father late Gopinath Munde, to pay homage to Bhagwan baba, a revered saint for the Vanjari and the larger Other Backward Class (OBC) community that she represents. The gathering was also a show of strength by Munde.

Shah in his last visit to Mumbai in September had frontlined Kashmir as the main electoral issue in Maharashtra.

Addressing the large gathering of OBCs, Shah also said the Modi government always worked for the betterment of the Vanchits and the OBCs. “The Modi government set up the National Commission on Backward Class, which was not done for the past 70 years. Ask why could those playing politics of caste fulfil this demand,” said Shah.

OBCs are said to be make up nearly 40% of the state population (no verified statistics available, going by Mandal commission figure of 52 per cent), but are fragmented in over 350 castes. Munde was among the tallest leaders of the OBC community in Maharashtra and after his death, Pankaja has been leading her father’s constituency and pitching herself as the BJP’s OBC face. The OBCs have been a traditional support base of the BJP, which the latter does not want to lose even as it inches closer to Marathas, who have been granted 16% reservation by the Maharashtra government.

She had invited Shah to see the memorial, along with a 25-ft statue of Bhagwan baba, she got built at Sawargaon.

Shah was received at the Aurangabad airport by Munde and taken to the venue in a chopper. There, he received a welcome by waving of 370 Tricolour flags and firing of 370 canons in the air. The entire flank of the BJP leadership and MLAs, including speaker Haribhau Bagade, Beed MP and Munde’s second daughter and MP Pritam Munde, state minister from Marathwada region Ram Shinde, were present at the rally, although chief minister Devendra Fadnavis did not attend it.

Shah endorsed Munde’s leadership of the OBCs. He said, “Gopinath Munde made Bhagwan baba’s life and teachings immemorial and I am glad that Pankaja is following in the footsteps of her father to lead the OBCs.”

“Fadnavis had to attend the RSS’s morning Dussehra function and the evening Ravan Dahan event in Nagpur, so he could not make it to the rally. It was also not on his schedule,” said an official with the CMO.

The Opposition has panned the BJP for making Kashmir the central poll issue in Maharashtra.

“Will the BJP speak about the doubling of state debt, over 16,000 farmer suicides, the mass closure of shops and business, large-scale unemployment and high crimes against women in the state or will they only discuss Kashmir,” asked Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant.