'Illegal' Bangladeshis will not be allowed to stay in the country: Shah

BJP chief Amit Shah today asserted that illegal Bangladeshi settlers would not be allowed to stay in the country.

Shah, who was in the city to address a meeting of party workers, expressed confidence that the BJP will emerge victorious in the next general elections even if the opposition parties cobble up an alliance.

We will not allow illegal Bangladeshi "intruders" to stay in the country even though we will make efforts to ensure that refugees who come seeking shelter are given citizenship, Shah is learnt to have told party workers.

While media-persons was not allowed in the meeting, senior BJP leader Bhupendra Yadav and the party's UP unit chief Mehendra Nath Pandey gave details of Shah's address to party workers.

According to the two leaders, Shah emphasised that the BJP was concerned about the well being of Hindus as well as Muslims living in the country.

Shah urged party workers to spread awareness about the developmental work carried out by the Modi and Yogi governments at the grassroots level adding if this was done the saffron party's triumph in the next general elections was a foregone conclusion.

The BJP chief said the party would contest the next elections on developmental agenda with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the centre of the campaign.

He set a target of '73-plus' for BJP in Uttar Pradesh in the next Lok Sabha elections. Uttar Pradesh has 80 Lok Sabha seats and BJP and its allies had won 73 of these in the 2014 polls.

People ask what would happen if SP-BSP come together but I want to say we have defeated such alliances in Uttar Pradesh in the past, Shah said according to the two BJP leaders.

Referring to Congress president Rahul Gandhi and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, Shah said in 2017 two "boys (ladke)" joined hands but the BJP secured over 300 seats in the Assembly.

This time if all the three (SP, BSP and Congress) join, we will win atleast 74 seats, Shah said, according to the two BJP leaders.

In the meeting, a resolution was presented which lauded the work done by the Yogi Adityanath government in UP.

Earlier in the day, BJP leader Vijay Bahadur Pathak told reporters that the party had prepared its roadmap for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. He said the party would work at all the 60,000 booths in the state in this regard.