Only Modi govt can give strong reply to Pak: Shah
■ ‘Rahul Gandhi playing with national security for votes’
Agra, March 24: Pitching the Lok Sabha polls as an election for rooting out terrorism and giving a befitting reply to Pakistan, BJP president Amit Shah on Sunday said only a government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi can achieve this goal.
Addressing a “Vijay Sankalp” rally in Agra, his first after the Lok Sabha poll schedule was announced on March 10, Mr Shah said the alliance led by Opposition parties cannot secure the country and only a Modi-led BJP government can do so.
He accused Congress president Rahul Gandhi of insulting the valour of armed forces by questioning the airstrikes on a terror camp in Pakistan’s Balakot.
“How low will you stoop for vote-bank politics? Don’t play with national security for vote bank, Rahul Gandhi,” he said, referring to Congress allegation that the BJP is politicising the air strikes.
The BJP said it organised over 200 “Vijay Sankalp” (pledge for victory) rallies across the
country on Sunday and has lined up another 250 such rallies on Tuesday.
Mr Shah also hit out at Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav and Congress leader Sam Pitroda for their controversial comments on the Pulwama terror attack and the subsequent airstrikes.
Targeting Opposition leaders like BSP supremo Mayawati, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, DMK president M.K. Stalin and TMC’s Mamata Banerjee, he said they are dreaming”
to remove Modi but don’t have the guts to fight Lok Sabha polls.
Mr Shah also spoke at length about welfare initiatives of the Modi government and said the general election is also about the development of 50 crore poor people.
He claimed that people have decided to discard caste politics and vote Modi to power with a mandate bigger than he had got in 2014 due to his politics of “sabka saath, sabka vikas”. Uttar Pradesh, which sends 80 MPs to the 543-member Lok Sabha, is crucial to the BJP’s bid to retain power at the Centre. It had won 71 and its ally Apna Dal two seats in 2014, making up for a little over 25 per cent of the 282 seats the saffron party had won. It is faced with a formidable alliance of SP and BSP in the upcoming polls.
While Mr Shah addressed a rally in Agra, other top party leaders, including Union minister Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj and Nirmala Sitharaman, addressed public meetings at different places. Uttar Pradesh ■
■ Continued from Page 1 chief minister Yogi Adityanath and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh addressed rallies in Agra and Saharanpur and Bhopal respectively.
In Bareilly, railways minister Piyush Goyal exuded confidence that the BJP would win the Amethi Lok Sabha seat, which is represented by Congress chief Rahul Gandhi.
“In the past five years, notable work has been done in every sector. The BJP will win more seats as compared to the previous election. The BJP will also win Amethi — the traditional seat of the Congress,” Mr Goyal said at the party’s “vijay sankalp sabha”.
The Union minister attacked Gandhi over reports that the Congress leader might also contest from Wayanad in Kerala.
Meanwhile, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman accused the previous Congress-led UPA government of not taking retaliatory action against Pakistan after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and claimed that the military would have been more than willing to respond in such a situation.
“If only a similar deterrent action was taken after the Mumbai attack... I have enough reasons to believe that the armed forces did tell the government at that time: We are ready if you want us to do something, but we want you to take the call,” news agency ANI quoted her as saying at an event in Hyderabad.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley, in a blog, took a dig at the Congress leadership saying that the dynastic parties succeed on the strength of some generations but sink with the others and wondered whether the grand old party was paying the cost of its dynastic character.
Nowadays, the minister said, some generic statements being frequently heard from Congress leaders are — “What can I do? He just doesn’t listen; Wait for the 24thof May, our politics will begin thereafter; I feel like quitting; our campaign planning is lagging behind. I am told Uncle Sam has come to take care of it; Let’s prepare for 2024.”
“They (the dynastic parties) succeed on the strength of some generations of the dynasty. They sink with the others,” Mr Jaitley said in his blog.