MUNGER/BEGUSARAI/UJIYARPUR (Bihar): BJP president Amit Shah on Wednesday tore into the Rahul Gandhi-led Congress and its allies accusing them of being soft on terror and of tacitly approving Kashmirs secession from India.
Shah also lambasted the Congress for coming up with promises of scrapping the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and abolition of sedition law in its poll manifesto and declared that such moves would be stoutly opposed by the BJP even if it was no longer in power.
The BJP chief was on a whirlwind election tour of Bihar where he spoke at three back-to-back rallies at Munger, Begusarai and Ujiyarpur in as many Lok Sabha constituencies.
In Munger, BJP’s ally JD(U) candidate Rajiv Ranjan Singh Lallan, a close associate of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is in the fray. Union minister Giriraj Singh is trying his luck from Begusarai while at Ujiyarpur in Samastipur district state BJP president Nityanand Rai is the NDA nominee.
When elections were being held in Jammu and Kashmir, leaders of the National Conference which is a Congress ally came out with the demand that the post of Prime Minister be restored in that state.
“For the past fortnight, I have been challenging the Congress to come clean on the issue. But Gandhi is silent and so is his allies like Lalu and Rabri Devi (RJD leaders, allies of the Congress in Bihar)”, Shah said at his rally in Ujiyarpur.
Can any country have more than one Prime Minister. The Congress and its allies want Kashmir to secede from India. It is for the voters to decide whether it is acceptable, Shah alleged referring to former J-K Chief Minister Omar Abdullahs controversial statement favoring restoration of the office of Wazir-e-Azam.
With the surgical strikes after Uri terror attack and the air strikes after Pulwama, India found itself on par with the US and Israel which are known to act tough against terrorism.
But the leaders of the Congress made faces as if a tragedy had befallen on them. Their facial expressions resembled those of the Pakistanis. Were terrorists blown to smithereens by our armed forces cousins of these opposition leaders, Shah asked. Let Rahul Gandhi hear and let Lalu hear inside his prison cell, you are free to do Ilu Ilu (a famous Bollywood song of the 1990s that abbreviated the expression I love you) with terrorists. But at present Narendra Modi is the Prime Minister and he is going to assume power again. Even when the BJP was no longer in power, every worker of the party will oppose your designs against AFSPA and sedition law.
“Rahul Gandhi will not be able to do as he pleases in his lifetime. We will ensure that after him if another Gandhi rises to power, he too does not play with national interests, Shah said evoking frenzied reactions from the crowds. Earlier, speaking at Begusarai where Union minister Giriraj Singh is in a triangular contest with CPIs Kanhaiya Kumar and RJDs Tanveer Hussain, Shah launched a caustic attack on the former JNU students union president, who is facing sedition charge.
You must teach a lesson to this ‘namoona’ (sample).defeat this member of the tukde tukde gang and send him back to Delhi for cooling his heels, Shah said without mentioning the CPI candidate by name. The BJP president also sought to arouse nationalistic sentiments by reciting several verses of renowned poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, who hailed from Begusarai.
He also made a mention of slain CRPF inspector Pintu Kumar Singh, who belonged to the district, though he mistakenly called him a Pulwama martyr as he had died in an encounter with militants three weeks after the terror attack.
In Munger, where he addressed his first rally, Shah also spoke at length about the welfare measures of the Narendra Modi government, enumerating its efforts in improving sanitation facilities, making cooking gas available to the poor and providing free health insurance cover under the Ayushman Bharat Yojana.
He also mocked, in all his speeches, at the opposition Mahagathbandhan wondering who would be the Prime Minister if it got a majority and shared a joke that he had received through an SMS wherein it was stated that the PMs post would be shared among regional satraps for six days of the week Monday to Saturday and on Sundays the nation would go to sleep.
He made a scathing attack at the RJD, an alliance partner of the Congress in Bihar. “Memories of the 15 years long Lalu-Rabri regime, known as jungle raj because of the lawlessness that characterized it, still brings shudders to the people of the state. A change has been brought about by the efforts of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi,the BJP president said.
The BJP chief reeled out figures to highlight contribution by Modi government and that by previous Congress-led UPA rule for the development of Bihar. Modi had promised an assistance of Rs 1.25 lakh crore.
Work has begun on schemes worth Rs 1.10 lakh crore. Rahul Gandhi came to the state and challenged Modi to tell what he did for Bihar in five years. Let him give an account of what five generations of his family did, Shah said evoking cheers from the crowd. (AGENCIES)
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