New Delhi: BJP President Amit Shah on Thursday asked its leaders to work for strengthening the outfit in states where its reach remains limited and exhorted them on the party's foundation day to take "NaMo track record" of governance to the masses.
Addressing the BJP Parliamentary Party in the absence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who after paying tributes to the party founders in its office left for Jharkhand to attend an event, Shah asked MPs to "obey with smile" the top brass' directives for events slated for the next few days.
The BJP has come out with a series of programmes for its parliamentarians and other leaders during the eight-day long period between April 6, its foundation day, and April 14, the birth anniversary of Dalit icon Bhim Rao Ambedkar.
It will focus particularly on the states and the Lok Sabha seats where the party had not performed well in the 2014 elections so as to improve its prospects in 2019. The BJP has lined up programmes of union ministers and senior leaders in these places.
"You have NaMO (Narendra Modi) track record starting from Gujarat before you. Take the NaMO role model of good governance and development to the masses everywhere...Modi had said in 2014 that the three factors of casteism, family rule and appeasement ail Indian politics.
"People had dealt a blow to it by voting for the BJP in 2014. They have done it again in the recent Uttar Pradesh polls. We have vowed to rid polity of these ills," he said.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar briefed reporters following the meeting and said apart from promoting digitisation and Bhim app, a digital payment interface, the party leaders will also inform the masses about benefits of the GST during the period.
Shah said the BJP was the only party out of over 1,600 registered outfits which has spread on the strength of its ideology and which practices internal democracy as well by holding organisational polls every three year.
Founded in 1980, the BJP is currently at the peak of its powers with 281 MPs in the Lok Sabha and over 1,398 MLAs in various state assemblies. It is in power in 13 states, he noted.
Its governments are run on three-point agenda of good governance, development and the poor's welfare, the BJP chief said.
Shah also mentioned Speaker Sumitra Mahajan's praise of the government and other Lok Sabha members for the passage of the budget, noting that this was the first time in the country's history that budget allocations will start being spent from the first day of the fiscal.
It used to start four-five months after the beginning of the new fiscal, he said.
