It’s progressive NDA vs dynastic alliance in Lok Sabha poll: Home Minister Amit Shah

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, February 18

On the concluding day of BJP’s National Council meeting in the capital, Union Home Minister Amit Shah termed the upcoming Lok Sabha election as a choice between “developmental and dynastic alliance led by ‘gareeb maa ka beta’ Narendra Modi and Congress ‘prince’ Rahul Gandhi, respectively”.

Barbs for Rahul

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• Shah reserved sharp barbs for Rahul Gandhi saying the “Congress prince has a habit of repeating a script for eight months and is parroting an OBC line these days without recalling the history of his ancestors opposing all pro-OBC moves”
• “People have to choose between a PM who hasn’t taken any off in 23 years through stints in Gujarat and now Centre, and a leader who vacations for three months every year,” he said

Calling the decade-long rule of BJP-led NDA coalition under PM Modi as a “period of all-round, all-inclusive development”, Shah tore into the Congress-led INDIA bloc for perpetrating dynastic politics and said, “this grouping of seven family-based parties working to install sons and daughters in key posts can never care for the poor.”

Shah was speaking on a resolution titled, “BJP: Desh ki aasha, vipaksha ki hatasha” (BJP: Nation’s hope, opposition’s despair).

Likening the 2024 General Election with the Mahabharata, the top BJP strategist said the 18th LS election was a contest like the Mahabharata where two factions were pitted against one another, like the Pandavas and the Kauravas.

“Today on one side is the NDA coalition under PM Modi and on the other is the INDI alliance under the Congress. This ‘Ghamandia’ coalition is the nurturer of politics of corruption, dynasty, casteism and appeasement, which PM Modi had eradicated in 10 years…The INDI alliance has no internal democracy and so cannot establish democracy in the country,” Shah argued, adding that the election was a choice between “developmental alliance and dynastic alliance led by Modi and Rahul Gandhi, respectively”.

“Go and tell the people that they have to choose between family-based parties and a poor mother’s son,” he said.

The minister also accused the Congress of being a “mother of instability”, listing 90 occasions where it dislodged elected governments.

The Congress record of destabilising state governments could not be broken in 100 years, said Shah.

Further taunting the opposition, he said INDI leader Sonia Gandhi wanted son Rahul to be PM; MK Stalin and Sharad Pawar want son and daughter to be CMs; late Mulayam Singh installed Akhilesh Yadav as CM in his lifetime.

“The BJP on the other hand has given India a PM who is an OBC, a President who hails from a marginalised tribal segment and a Vice President who has farming background. In the BJP, a booth worker can become President and PM because we have democratised the party,” said the minister, lashing out at the Opposition for playing politics of “negativity” by resisting all reforms from the GST to triple talaq and UCC.

Limits were reached when the Congress declined the invitation for Ram Mandir inauguration, he said, alleging that the party had distorted the concept of secularism by equating it with appeasement. Holding the grand old party responsible for India’s Partition, Shah said its “divisive mentality lives on with Congress leaders seeking fragmentation of India”.