Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - Live
BJP will expand in more states: Himanta
NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will continue to expand till 2029, has not reached “saturation” despite its domination of India’s political landscape, and the party is confident that it will forge ahead in the three states of Telangana, West Bengal and Odisha in the next Lok Sabha elections, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Saturday.
In a conversation with HT’s national political editor Sunetra Choudhury at the 20th Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, Sarma said that despite the delay, the BJP would honour its commitment on the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), as it will on the Uniform Civil Code (UCC).
Sarma, who has made a name for himself as a fiery orator and a trouble shooter across states, particularly in the North East, said: “I am sure that 2024 will give the BJP a further chance to expand towards the east and the south. I don’t think, till you win Tamil Nadu, and till you win Kerala, there will be saturation. Expansion is on and in 2024, you will see two or three more states where the BJP will be a force to reckon with.”
By 2029, Sarma said that the BJP would be “unassailable” across the country, and identified Telangana, Odisha and West Bengal as three states that the party is looking to target. Sarma pointed to the Munugode bypoll, which saw the Telangana Rashtra Samithi beat the BJP narrowly last week as a sign of the BJP’s “growth trajectory”. “Telangana is ready. In the last election, I think the BJP won 10,000 votes. Today the BJP lost by ten thousand,” he said.
In eastern India too, Sarma said that there were many seats where the BJP had not “reached its peak”. “You have Odisha, you have West Bengal. These are states where we are winning seats, but have not reached climax yet,” he said.
Responding to a question on the delay in framing the CAA rules, Sarma said that the BJP was committed to the legislation, and it was a “Hindu’s legitimate right to become a citizen in their motherland.”
“CAA is a part of our commitment and part of our ideology. People questioned where is the Ram Mandir, and you have seen it now. They asked when (Article) 370 will go, and it has gone. In the same way, you will see UCC coming, you will see CAA coming,” Sarma said. Article 370, which gave special rights to Jammu & Kashmir, was abrogated in 2019.
Sarma, who joined the BJP from the Congress in August 2015, before rising to become Assam chief minister six years later, lashed out at the Congress and said that while Prime Minister Narendra Modi was an inspiration for the world, even those in the Congress do not look at the Gandhis as such. “In the Congress, that you have to worship the grandfather, the father and the grandchildren...is a compulsion,” he said.
He took potshots at the election process for the post of Congress president, and predicted that the “thousand people that voted for Shashi Tharoor” could join the BJP within a year. “If someone feels (Mallikarjun) Kharge symbolises democracy in the Congress, I do not know what that is. If Shashi Tharoor had won, I would have said yes, democracy has arrived in the Congress... Any BJP president has to go through a democratic process and I am sure that he will not be remote controlled, and he will not be a face who can be ignored,” Sarma added.