New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah on Friday projected the Lok Sabha polls as a clash of ideologies and likened it to the “decisive” third battle of Panipat between Marathas and the Afghan Army, saying the election results will be equally significant for the country.
Targeting the Opposition, Mr Shah said its proposed alliance has no nationwide relevance and the BJP had defeated each of them in 2014, claiming that the party is sure to come back to power with a bigger majority. It had won 282 of 543 seats in the last Lok Sabha polls.
The party has the “world’s most popular, visionary, transparent and hardworking” leader in Mr Modi with the opposition having no match to him, he asserted, asking thousands of BJP delegates to go with the pledge of bringing the government back to power.
Rival parties joining hands against the BJP is their admission of Mr Modi’s strength, he said. In his over an hour-long speech, Mr Shah emphasised on a number of government’s measures- especially those related to security, curbing corruption and welfare programmes for the poor and farmers- and attacked the Congress for the dare to target Modi on the issue of graft when its president Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi are on bail in a “case of corruption”.
With Modi and other top leaders on dais he gave the party war cry to win the next polls, claiming that people like the BJP want a “majboot sarkar” (strong government) and the opposition wants a “majboor sarkar” (helpless government).
“Nobody other than Modi can give a strong government,” Mr Shah said.
“Two ideologies are facing off during the polls. We stand for cultural nationalism and antyodaya (poor’s welfare). On the other hand there is neither a leader not policy, only a disparate group of selfish parties brought together by their greed of power,” he said.
