New Delhi: BJP President Amit Shah expressed confidence that the party is slated to win the next Lok Sabha polls with a much bigger mandate compared to 2014 one as he said that the party has assigned a dedicated team to analyse the by-poll results ‘at the booth level’.
“We are not taking Uttar Pradesh results lightly. We are analysing it minutely. But at the same time, the mandate on two seats cannot be seen as countrywide mandate. Twelve lakh voters do not represent 125 crore people of India,” Mr Shah said while he was being interviewed.
Replying to a question that the party may do something drastic ( such as building Ram Temple in Ayodhya or conducting surgical strike across the Line of Control) to get support for the win in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Amit Shah brushed aside the supposition by saying the that BJP does not need any such thing to perform well.
“If you remember in 2014, it was being said that Narendra Modi cannot be made the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, or if he is made he would not be able to lead the NDA..the NDA would fall apart etc. But now the same Narendra Modi has been running a successful government for the last four years”
“We do not live in the air, we are connected to the ground. The Narendra Modi government has done the work on the ground from the Ujjawal Yojana and the Kisan Fasal Bima Yojana to Mudra Yojana and providing electricity to every village. So we are confident we will get a bigger mandate than the 2014 one,” Mr Shah asserted.
He took this opportunity to attach Congress Party for indulging in caste based politics and trying to create divisions on the lines of caste by trying to legalize Lingayats as separate community that will be not at all related to the Hindu religion.
“Considering caste equations before giving ticket to a candidate is one thing but stoking casteist passions is quite another. The Congress is doing the latter in Karnataka to reap political benefits just ahead of the assembly polls,” he commented.
Commenting on other issues of parties like Telugu Desam Party (TDP) deserting the National Democratic Alliance and BJP’s age old ally Shiv Sena openly talking about its displeasure with NDA, Amit Shad said that the party does not compel or ask for an alliance with BJP and they cannot stop some who want to leave.
“We do not behave like the Congress with our alliance partners. We treat our partners with respect. In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP has overwhelming majority but we still have given place of respect to our partners. Similarly in Tripura we have given respectable place to IPFT despite BJP having complete majority. Our friendship is not friendship of opportunity. We still have 30 parties in the NDA,” he added.
Talking about some partners who act according to the prevailing weather likes Ram Vilas Paswan and Nitish Kumar, Mr Shah said “even if they are weathercock, they are not going to leave the NDA because the wind is blowing in our favour”.