New Delhi: MPs and MLAs were inaccessible to people during the Congress rule, alleged BJP chief Amit Shah, adding that his party had brought in an “institutional change” in the way elected representatives engaged with the masses.
“I grew up in a village... Elected representatives from the Congress were there in many parts of the country. We had seen that meeting an MLA or an MP was unimaginable. It was not possible to meet even the associates of these persons (legislators). No one would dare take anyone to his or her house. If someone got an opportunity to shake hands with them (MLAs/MPs) from below a stage, they would not shake hands with anyone else for the next three days. Such was the scenario,” Mr Shah said. He was speaking at an event after releasing a community outreach magazine of BJP MP Maheish Girri in the national capital.
He also claimed that prior to the formation of the Modi government, people were beginning to “question their faith” in a “multi-party democratic system”. But the BJP, in a multi-party system, had changed the “character” of a public representative, he asserted. He said public representatives couldn’t discharge functions effectively unless they reached out to the people.
“If he doesn’t know what the people are thinking, that elected representative will not be able to fulfil his duties,” the BJP president said, adding that it was logistically not possible to reach out to every party worker in person, let alone every person in public. “There was a time when people were looking for an alternative, wondering if the multi-party democratic system built by our constitution makers had failed?” he said.
“But then 2014 came, and after 30 years a party formed a government with a complete majority. Also, a non-Congress party formed a complete majority government for the first time since Independence,” he said.
