‘Rahul won’t see win even via binoculars’

BHOPAL: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah on Friday took a jab at Congress president Rahul Gandhi and urged BJP workers to be prepared with fireworks to celebrate a win in Karnataka.

“Even if Rahul Gandhi uses binoculars, he cannot see Congress emerging victorious in the coming days. I wonder how Rahul Ji can dream of such things,” Shah said in remarks that come ahead of the May 12 Karnataka assembly elections, whose outcome will be known three days later. The Congress is seeking to retain its hold on Karnataka, the last sizeable state it controls, and the BJP is trying to return power in the only southern Indian state it has governed in the past. Both parties have taken acerbic digs at each other in the course of the election campaign

Shah was in Bhopal to introduce new state BJP president Rakesh Singh to party workers. He also addressed a gathering of party office-bearers and public representatives from across the state. Setting the stage for assembly elections due in Madhya Pradesh later this year, Shah said that since the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014, it had formed government in 14 states, starting with Maharashtra. He said Gandhi should not even dream of winning assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, which is a BJP bastion.

Referring to the appointment of Kamal Nath as the state Congress president ,Shah alleged without naming him that the person whom the party has named its MP unit chief happened to be close to corporate houses.

The fight in Madhya Pradesh will therefore be a fight between corporate houses and farmers who, he said, are represented by the BJP.

Shah said the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan notwithstanding, the assembly election has to be won on the strength of the party organisation. He urged party workers to approach every single person in the state till the date of polling to apprise the electorate of the achievements of Modi-Shivraj governments. He said 6.5 million of the 10 million BJP workers in Madhya Pradesh would be able to contact each and every person in the state within just five days if they started campaigning today.

Reacting to Shah’s speech, leader of the Opposition Ajay Singh said people will give a befitting reply to the BJP in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and other states where assembly elections are due. Singh said Shah had also omitted mentioning the BJP’s humiliating defeats in elections in Punjab, Bihar and Delhi.