BJP Chief Amit Shah Sets Tone For UP polls
KAKORI: (Uttar Pradesh): At 12:30 pm on Saturday, BJP president Amit Shah arrived at Kakori on the outskirts of Lucknow to shouts of “Bharat mata ki jai”, and thousands of BJP flags.Amit Shah’s visit was part of a nationwide event by the BJP called “Azadi 70 – Yaad Karo Kurbani”, a precursor to the party’s much hyped “Tiranga Yatra” that will begin from August 16, with party lawmakers and legislators taking the Tricolour to their constituencies, riding two wheelers.
His first stop – the ‘temple’, or memorial built at Kakori to honour the revolutionaries who robbed train carrying money for the British treasury in 1925. Mr Shah garlanded the statues of all the freedom fighters in the temple, including Chandrashekhar Azad, Ashfaqullah Khan, Ram Prasad Bismil.
It’s the BJP’s big independence push across the country, but in UP, the state that will see assembly polls early next year, there is more to it.At a public meeting after the event, Amit Shah began his speech by saying he “would not talk politics”, but the temptation, perhaps, was too hard to resist.
“If SP or BSP come to power in UP, they will work only for a particular community and themselves; BJP alone believes in “sab ka saath, sabka vikas,” Mr Shah said to a 5,000 strong crowd. Taking a dig at the Congress, he said, “No development was done in the country since Independence as the government was run by one family for 60 years. Without development of UP, country’s development is not possible.”
“Modi ji (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) formed a government at the centre with the blessings of UP and we need your blessings again,” Mr Shah said. The BJP bagged 70 out of 80 seats from UP in general election in 2014.Later in the day, Mr Shah also had lunch at the BJP MP Kaushal Kishore’s house, who is from dalit community.
