Shah predicts 20-year innings for Modi govt

K V Prasad

Tribune News Service

Bengaluru, April 3

Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah said the party-led government has brought in a change in political culture heralding progress.

“Modi Government has arrived and will be in power for 10 to 20 years…It is not going to go away,” party chief Shah said in his inaugural address at the two-day National Executive meeting which began on Friday.

In the first-such exercise after the advent of Modi-Shah leadership in the party, Shah highlighted the achievements of the Modi Government at the Centre, while announcing four programmes to be associated with social welfare schemes encompassing girl child, cleanliness, eradication of manual scavenging and clean Ganga.

Hitting out at the Opposition, particularly the Congress, for its opposition to the controversial land acquisition bill, Shah said that the Opposition was desperate and therefore raised "non-issues". 

Stating that the BJP was going to evolve the strategy to counter the “misleading campaign”, Shah, who was speaking at the BJP national executive meet, said: “The Opposition has deliberately spread many misgivings about the Bill which is in the interest of farmers. We will take the message to farmers. The BJP is friend of farmers. It is farmers who have given us mandate.”

“The Opposition is desperate, hopeless and directionless. They should stop finding those faults and shortcomings that do not exist. If they have to find something, then they should try to find their leader. Instead of raising non-issues and fictional issues, they should find out where their leader is,” BJP spokesperson Praskash Javdekar quoted Shah as sayinf in an apparent a dig at the absence of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who is on a sabbatical for introspection.

Taking a jibe at its ally-turned-rival, the Janata Dal (United), the BJP president said that since the former snapped ties with saffron party, it has brought in the ‘Jungle Raj’ in Bihar.  

Talking the growth of the party during 2014 since its unprecedented victory at the Lok Sabha polls and successive wins in the assemblies of Haryana and Jharkhand, the party chief said BJP was now in power in 12 states—on its own in eight and in four, including Jammu and Kashmir, with coalition partners. However, he said refused to analyse the Delhi polls debacle, in which the part managed to secure only three of the 70 assembly seats, only saying that the Delhi unit must introspect on its own to find the reasons for the loss.

Shah claimed BJP has become the largest political party in the world with 9.25 crore members and was “hurtling” towards the 10-crore mark.

Accepting Modi’s suggestion that energy of the newly-enrolled members should be utilised for social issues, Shah said members will be encouraged to work for the Beti Bachhao, Beti Padaho, Swaach Bharat and Namami Gange campaign, apart from working towards eradication of manual scavenging in the country.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, party patriarch L.K. Advani were on the dais as Shah addressed the delegates, which included 111 National Executive members besides a number of special invitees, including Chief Ministers of the BJP-ruled states and its state presidents.

The two-day meet will adopt two resolutions —an omnibus political resolution and one on foreign policy — besides coming out with a strategy on the land bill. (With PTI inputs)