New Delhi, 26/3: Saying that the Congress starts “dreaming” during the election time, Union home minister Amit Shah on Saturday said that “Gujarat has been a BJP bastion and it will remain so.” Shah said that the way “state government, party workers and people at large jointly fought to get out of coronavirus crisis is an example of why the BJP has not been defeated since 1990.”
Addressing a gathering in Kalol town in Gandhinagar district, Shah said: “when the election comes, Congress starts dreaming. They have started it now by holding meetings, going to press and getting things published in the press. I want to tell everyone that Gujarat was, is and will remain a BJP bastion.” Shah represents Gandhinagar in Lok Sabha as its member of parliament.
Praising Gujarat BJP president C R Paatil’s leadership, the union minister said that during Covid-19, BJP workers showed an “ideal example” of how a political party gets involved in “social work.” Shah said that while the BJP government distributed 5 kg grains to every individual, the party workers supplied other essentials such as masks, sanitisers, oxygen among others to the needy ones during the time of the crisis.
“As a result, the joint efforts by the government, party workers and the people, everyone got out of the crisis. This is the example of why BJP has remained undefeated since 1990,” Shah said. He was speaking on the occasion of inaugurating a public garden and foundation laying ceremony of a railway overbridge. He also mocked Congress for winning just two seats out of 403 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh.
He also addressed a gathering at Bhoyan Moti village where he laid foundation stones for projects worth Rs 22 crore. Here, he said that BJP’s victory in Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand has showed the trust people have in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership. Earlier in the day, he also inaugurated Gujarat’s first Audiology Speech Language Pathology College and a Diet Centre at Sola civil hospital in Ahmedabad.
Although the state assembly elections are scheduled to be held by end of the year, the political movements in the state have started to get momentum. This started with Prime Minister Narendra Modi holding back-to-back roadshows in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar districts earlier this month. Most of the senior state BJP leaders including its chief C R Paatil are busy with meetings and holding public events across the state.
Opposition Congress also took a plunge into election mode by participating in a protest against the Par-Tapi-Narmada river link project on Friday in state capital Gandhinagar. A day before, the party-appointed 75 general secretaries and 25 vice-presidents to the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee. A group of its leaders met the party’s former president Rahul Gandhi and “discussed the party’s strategy for contesting the elections.”
Meanwhile, the Aam Aadmi Party is also scheduled to hit the poll campaign in Ahmedabad on April 2. Party’s national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Punjab counterpart Bhagwant Mann are expected to take out a foot march. There are also reports of some well-known political leaders joining the party in the coming days.