Shah asks cadres not to have unfair expectations
LUCKNOW: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah, who reportedly flew economy class to Lucknow for a three-day visit, met ministers, party leaders and allies at the party office to focus on probity in public life in the birth centenary year of party ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya.
After asking the cadres to help make BJP “invincible”, he assured them of working out an arrangement like the one in party-ruled Gujarat where two days are earmarked for cadres to meet ministers.
But he also urged the cadres to remember the government represented not just the BJP but “wishes of the state’s 22 crore people”, a message aimed at warning the cadres against ‘unfair expectations’ from the government.
He spoke of coordination between “satta aur sangathan (government and the party)” and is learnt to have paid equal importance to state’s organisational head Keshav Prasad Maurya and CM Adityanath Yogi during a meeting of the party’s core group that ended late Saturday night.
A party leader said, “By staying at the BJP office when he could easily put up in luxury hotels and holding ministers’ meeting here, he has conveyed a broad hint to all cadre and ministers on the need to stay away from corruption.” Shah, while patting the Yogi government also spoke of how perception about the government would show up in 2019 when PM Narendra Modi seeks another five-year term.
The BJP chief also met UP allies. While union minister Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal was all praise for BJP government, SBSP leader Om Prakash Rajbhar, who had previously threatened to stage a sit-in if his demands weren’t met, pointedly said that his issues weren’t related about ‘contracts and tenders’. “I had a good 25- minute meeting with BJP chief but my issues were about drains and roads, not contracts and tenders,” he said after the meeting.