Grand alliance of opposition parties could hurt BJP in UP: Amit Shah

After feedback that the party could be struggling to return to power in Rajasthan, where its beset with infighting, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah on Tuesday asked party workers in Jaipur to put their heart and sinew into winning the forthcoming Rajasthan Assembly polls.

Shah said the state polls to Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan will be a “trailer” for 2019. “The BJP's victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections will pave the way for the party's rule for the next 50 years,” Shah told BJP workers at a ‘Shakti Kendra Sammelan’. Shah had made a similar claim at the BJP national executive meeting on Sunday.

Significantly, Shah also conceded that the ‘mahagatbandhan’, or grand alliance, of opposition parties could have some impact in Uttar Pradesh. It’s a key admission with UP sending as many as 80-seats to the Lok Sabha, of which BJP, along with ally Apna Dal’s two, had won 73 in 2014.

In a measure being seen as an outreach to scores of Asha and Anganwadi workers in the poll-bound three north Indian states, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a hike in their monthly honorarium from October.

In addition, all accredited social health activists (Asha) will be brought under the coverage of various social security schemes and provided free insurance cover under Prime Minister Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana and Prime Minister Suraksha Bima Yojana. This had been a longstanding demand of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Until now, opinion surveys have been bleak about the chances of the Vasundhara Raje government returning to power, while the Congress campaign, under its leaders Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot, has picked up.

If Gehlot and Pilot have agreed to subsume their differences in the interest of the party, Shah and Raje have had their share of tension over the appointment of the party’s state unit chief, with the chief minister finally getting her way. There are also more than one power centres within the state BJP.

While the party has already announced Raje as its chief ministerial candidate, Shah asked party workers to work hard without paying any heed who might the chief minister or a minister in the next government.

“The assembly elections are a trailer for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and you need to shed more sweat in the field to ensure a thumping victory,” he said at the Birla auditorium, where he was addressing local bodies' representatives.

Shah said workers should think only about the party symbol 'lotus' and Bharat Mata when they campaign. He said the ‘mahagathbandhan', or the grand alliance, that the opposition is talking about will have no impact except a little influence in Uttar Pradesh.

Shah said the workers should ask people what they felt about having Congress president Rahul Gandhi as prime minister, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as external affairs minister and Samajwadi Party's Mulayam Singh Yadav as defence minister.

“You need to tell people about this. Go to the public and highlight the work done by the Modi and the Raje governments,” he said. “Rahul baba has the right to dream but he will wake up on the day of counting,” he said.

He claimed the Congress has tried to create a state of confusion in the country, and referred to lynching of Mohammed Akhlaq in Dadri over alleged cow slaughter and the 2015 protest in which a group of writers returned their awards. “During elections, issues like Akhlaq or 'award wapsi' come up,” he said.

“The BJP had won elections when the Akhlaq issue and award wapsi happened and the party will win this time too even if they (Congress) bring up some other issue,” he said. Incidentally, the two issues had caught the national imagination in the run up to the Bihar assembly polls in October 2015, which the BJP had lost.

At another meeting, Shah raised the issue of the National Register of Citizens, or NRC, and said the Modi government will deport each and every “infiltrator”. He also asked party workers to cover at least five villages till the elections and tell people about the work done by the government, like the surgical strike against Pakistan and the increase in minimum support price for farm produce.

This is Shah's third visit since July to Rajasthan.