Did not single out any leader, community in speech: Shah
DEFENSIVE Challenges cases in court; raises questions on working of state EC, saying SP, RLD leaders went scot-free, while those of BJP, Cong were targeted
NEW DELHI: Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Uttar Pradesh incharge Amit Shah on Wednesday moved the Allahabad high court, challenging the FIRs lodged against him by the Uttar Pradesh government for alleged hate speeches made by him at election meetings in Bijnore and Shamli districts.
Shah rejected the allegation that he had sought to communalise the 2014 Lok Sabha elections by exhorting the electorate in Shamli, a constituency in western UP, to take “badla” (revenge) for the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.
The Election Commission (EC) had served a notice on him for his alleged inflammatory speech and the UP Police filed an FIR against him on April 6.
Shah clarified that neither had he singled out any community nor any political leader in his controversial speech. “All I had said to the crowd was that if injustice had been meted out to them or their self-respect had been hurt, they should avenge it by exercising their electoral franchise. I had told them... they should press the button on the voting machine as (the) time for using swords and arrows was history.”
He said the only way to counter price rise and loss of jobs was to teach the UPA government a lesson by casting votes against them.
Shah urged the central EC to look into the working of the UP State Election Commission, which, he claimed takes action against BJP and Congress leaders immediately, but not so in the case of Samajwadi Party leaders such as Mulayam Singh Yadav, Azam Khan and Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Ajit Singh.
“My understanding is that the FIR against me was registered by a returning officer on the instructions of the State Election Commission, which is part of the central EC,” he said. “How is it then that I am served a separate notice by central EC even after an FIR? Why was no action taken against Ajit Singh, who said he wants to ‘throw the BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi into the sea’ or against Mulayam and Azam Khan, who have been making poisoned speeches against Modi and me?”
Shah, who has been masterminding the BJP’s crucial Uttar Pradesh campaign, said “antiincumbency” against the governments in the state and at the Centre was at its peak. “There is a Modi wave all over India, with women and youth strongly backing him,” Shah said “In UP, the Modi wave is more in rural areas, which lag in development and opportunities, than in urban centres.
He predicted that the BJP would break all records in UP.