Will win despite Dadri mob lynching, award wapsi: Amit Shah in Rajasthan

Jaipur: Asking party workers to work hard to ensure victory in the assembly election three months later, BJP president Amit Shah has said that the outcome in Rajasthan will be trailer for the 2019 general elections.

Amit Shah who was in Jaipur to take stock of poll preparation said that the results in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh will set the trend for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Addressing party workers in Shakti Kendra Sammelan during his day-long trip, Shah said, “The ‘mahagathbandhan', or the grand alliance, that the opposition is talking about will have no impact except a little influence in Uttar Pradesh.”

According to him Congress president Rahul Gandhi is having dream of Mungeri Lal. “The BJP is very strong in Rajasthan. Party angad ke paav ki tarah jami hai, usko koi ukhad nahi sakta (The party is firm like Angad’s foot. It is difficult to root it out).” He said that in the land of Maharana Pratap and Chetak no one can defeat the BJP.

He instructed party workers to go and ask people what they felt about having Congress president Rahul Gandhi as prime minister, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as external affairs minister and Samajwadi Party's Mulayam Singh Yadav as defence minister.

He also touched the sensitive leadership issue in Rajasthan for the Congress, asking why it has not declared CM candidate.

“People also have right to ask about name of your leader. Why don’t you declare your leader and clearly say that under whose leadership you are going to fight the election,” Shah said adding that the party without leader, policies and programmes doesn’t deserve to win.

Picking up from his last visit in August when he came to flag off chief minister Vasundhara Raje’s ‘Rajasthan Gaurav Yatra’, Amit Shah came down heavily on the Congress over National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise n Assam. “We will now allow a single Bangladeshi infiltrator to live in this country but the Congress is worried about its vote bank without caring for country’s people and security. Let them oppose but we will not budge from our resolve,” he said.

“You speak of human rights but I ask you don’t the poor people in the country have human rights? Isn’t there a concern about the security of the country? Hundreds of terrorists infiltrate into the country and plan bomb blasts. Several such incidents happened during your regime in Ahmedabad and Mumbai,” the BJP president said.

In the same breath, Shah raised issue of “urban naxals” and criticised Rahul Gandhi for support to social activists arrested by Maharashtra police. “Shuld we give liberty to those who plot to kill prime minister of the country,” he asked.

Shah was confident that the party would win every election irrespective of hue and cry made over mob lynching. He even evoked Akhlaq’s murder in Uttar Pradesh three years ago in this regard.

“We won in Uttar Pradesh despite controversy over Akhlaq’s murder and award wapsi. These issues are raised whenever election comes up but we will win no matter what.”

Mohammed Akhlaq was lynched by a mob in Dadri in 2015, for allegedly storing beef in his house. The BJP had swept the assembly election thereafter in Uttar Pradesh in 2017.

The reference was obviously to several cases of mob lynching and hate crime in Rajasthan in last one year. The BJP government is believed to be facing strong anti incumbency in the state.