BJP national meet charts plans to capture power in more states
new delhi — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is ruling, besides at the Centre, most of India as never before in the party’s history.
In fact, they are in charge of 13 states, and share power in four others. Indeed, this point in BJP’s history could be seen as its peak.
But the party’s president Amit Shah believes this is just the beginning. The disintegrating Congressled opposition should be afraid.
On Saturday, Amit Shah, possibly the most powerful man in India after Narendra Modi, said in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, at the BJP’s National Executive Council that “the party’s golden era will begin only when it has chief ministers in every state and the party holds power from panchayat to parliament.”
This promise or threat (depending on one’s political loyalties) was received with a standing ovation at the BJP national executive meeting.
The top leaders of the BJP, including Narendra Modi, are in Odisha for a party conclave and a public rally. Odisha will be going for assembly elections next year, and so far has remained immune to BJP’s overtures. For three terms now, chief minister Biju Patnaik has been in power, leading a regional party.
Amit Shah said he would like his party to win in leftist states like West Bengal, Kerala, and Tripura, too, besides stand-alone states like Odisha. “It’s only when we get these states and the local civic bodies that we can say our golden period has begun,” Shah said.
“That sounds like Hitler talking about his 1000-year Reich,” said a Congress leader.
The Congress party has been for long saying, though without much effect, that most of the claims that Modi has been making are not based on facts. The Modi government has been quite loud and insistent in its claims of record performances in economy.
On Saturday, another Congress leader, Jairam Ramesh, said that in 2016-17, bank credit grew by 5 per cent, the lowest in 60 years, and that the plant load factor — a measure of capacity utilisation — stood at 60 per cent, the lowest in 15 years. Ramesh said these were figures released by the Reserve Bank of India and go against the tall claims made by the BJP.
In Odisha, though, neither at the national Executive Council nor at the massive public rally held in the capital, Bhubaneswar, was there any talk of anything less that selfadulation.
“In the first two years of Modi government, only 400,000 jobs were created in the organised sector as opposed to 2 million jobs created during the first two years of the Congress-led government,” said Ramesh.
“These indicators, which are all government figures, belie the prime minister’s repeated claims of the economy taking off. Modi may claim that the GDP is growing at 7 per cent, but other indicators show a stagnant economy. His party president may organise the biggest rallies, but facts are facts,” Ramesh said.
The BJP does not seem troubled. Nor the people. The rally in Odisha has been massive. And, Sunday evening, when Modi would touch down in the diamond city of Surat in Gujarat, the sentiment was likely to be no different.
Already giant cut outs of the prime minister have come up in the city. The party organisers expect a massive turnout at the public meeting which would be addressed by Modi.
Everything looks set for the Reich. Certainly, the golden period seems just to have begun.