Amit Shah to take fight to Rahul Gandhi's Amethi

Lucknow: BJP president Amit Shah will visit Amethi on October 10 to mobilise cadre for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and return fire on Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s recent attacks on the saffron party during his Gujarat visit, party sources said.

The decision to visit Amethi, the constituency of Mr Gandhi, apparently comes after the latter held a series of meetings in Gujarat ahead of the Assembly elections later this year.

“Rahul Gandhi is attacking the BJP in Gujarat and Mr Shah will return the fire in Amethi, which remains neglected even after having been a VIP constituency for several decades. If the Congress is targeting us in the home state of PM Narendra Modi and Mr Shah, we will also target the Congress in its bastion,” said a BJP functionary.

Mr Shah’s visit to Amethi will take place on the eve of the party’s state executive meeting, proposed to be held in Kanpur on October 11 and 12. Mr Shah will interact with party workers during his Amethi visit and may even address a public function.

“We are not going to let go of Amethi. Smriti Irani, who had contested from here in 2014, has been visiting Amethi frequently, and she interacts with the local people on a regular basis. She, in all probability, will be contesting again from Amethi, and this time, she is sure to defeat the Congress vice-president who has been taking the constituency and its people for granted,” the BJP functionary said.

The BJP’s game plan, apparently, is to pin down the Gandhis in their bastions — Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Rae Bareli and Rahul Gandhi in Amethi — so that they are unable to campaign as vigorously as they want in other parts of the country for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP is in no mood to adhere to political niceties, which include giving space to top political leaders in their own constituencies. BJP general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak, however, downplayed the importance of Mr Shah’s visit to Amethi.

He said, “The BJP has always involved itself in the politics of issues. Amethi is lacking in development and is one of the most backward regions in the state. As a political party, we are well within our rights to raise such issues, and there is nothing personal in it.”

Sources also said that the BJP was preparing to showcase the lack of development in Amethi and Rae Bareli in the Gujarat elections to drive home the point that the Gandhi family has not even ensured the development of their own constituencies.