‘Choice between Modi, Rahul’: Shah unveils BJP’s 2024 pitch

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, June 10

The BJP on Saturday unveiled its 2024 Lok Sabha election pitch with the party’s principal strategist and Union Home Minister Amit Shah declaring that the upcoming General Election would be all about choosing between Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi as India’s next PM.

Shah began his election outreach in Nanded, with salutations to Guru Gobind Singh and message of “protecting national sovereignty at every cost”. Earlier, Shah paid obeisance at Takht Sri Hazur Sahib. He said while PM Modi had raised India’s prestige in the world, “Rahul was busy insulting the country on foreign soil”.

“Today the leader of one country calls Modi “boss”, another wants his autograph… On the other hand, Rahul is breaking the years-old convention of not playing domestic politics on foreign soil,” Shah said during his rally to mark nine years of the Modi government.

Listing welfare benefits being rolled out, the Home Minister taunted Congress saying, “Four generations of Gandhi family ruled India Pt Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and then Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. All this while the Congress could not provide people with toilets, housing, electricity, free ration, gas connections. What was it doing? The only PM who cared about the poor in post-independence India is Narendra Modi.”

Shah declared the BJP’s target of winning 45 of Maharashtra’s 48 Lok Sabha seats as he attacked former ally Uddhav Thackeray, calling him a “renegade”. “On the eve of 2019 Maharashtra elections, I and Devendra Fadvanis negotiated with Uddhav who agreed that Fadnavis would become CM if the BJP bagged a bigger mandate. When that happened, he reneged and joined hands with the Congress to get the CM’s chair,” Shah said.

Taking on NCP chief Sharad Pawar for “being part part of the most corrupt UPA regime”, Shah challenged Uddhav to clarify his stand on Ram Mandir, Uniform Civil Code and removing Veer Savarkar from history books by Karnataka Government.

Shah also accused Pawar of opposing the abrogation of Article 370 and said, “Rahul and Pawar used to say the abrogation would lead to bloodshed in the Valley. Let alone blood, no one today has the courage to even pelt a stone,” he said.