Express News Service
LUCKNOW: With nearly a week left for the voting in the first phase on February 10 of the upcoming UP Assembly elections, Union Home Minister Amit Shah took the BJP campaign forward conducting a door-to-door contact programme in Atrauli, the turf of former UP CM Kalyan Singh, on Wednesday. The Union Home Minister also campaigned for the party in Badaun which will go to the polls in the second phase on February 14.
Addressing a gathering in support of BJP candidate and Kalyan Singh’s grandson Sandeep Singh in Atrauli, Shah remembered the contributions of Kalyan Singh in ensuring the rights of backward and deprived sections of society besides renouncing his Chief Ministership for the sake of the Ram temple in Ayodhya without thinking twice.
Invoking Kalyan Singh further, Shah called the former UP CM his ‘political guru’ who gave him the pulse of UP politics in 2013 after which the party had been winning elections back-to-back.
Cautioning people against voting for the SP-RLD combine, the Union Home Minister claimed that the track record of law and order was so bad in the previous SP regime that if it would be voted again, the upcoming defence corridor of which Aligarh was an important node would suffer a setback. “Those who are intending to invest lakhs of crores in the defence corridor in your district, will think twice if the SP government comes to power in the state taking development backward,” Shah told the people of Atrauli.
“If you will vote for SP, industry will suffer, business will close down and only the reign of terror, hooliganism, abductions, murders, loot, robbery and lawlessness will prevail as it used to be in the previous SP regime,” he claimed. “Akhilesh Yadav will play a game of red light-green light. He’ll show a red light to development and green light to mafias,” he added.
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Shah also took on the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, saying they would never think about the poor and would not do anything for development. He said, “I ask you what this bua-bhatija have done? Gas, toilets, electricity, houses — all this has been done by PM Modi.”
Asking if everyone got vaccinated, he cornered SP chief Akhilesh Yadav over his BJP’s vaccine remark. He said, “You have all got vaccinated, right? Akhilesh Yadav used to say this is BJP’s vaccine. In the end, he also took the shot.”
Shah also launched a scathing attack on the Congress saying in the 10 years of the party’s rule, terrorists from Pakistan infiltrated into India and the then Prime Minister kept silent. He said after the BJP came to power, PM Narendra Modi took swift action and gave a free hand to security forces to eliminate terrorists.
“When the Congress governed for 10 years, Alia, Malia, Jamalia from Pakistan invaded our country and beheaded our jawans. Then PM Manmohan Singh didn’t do anything. But after the Uri and Pulwama attacks, PM Modi had the courage to conduct surgical strikes to eliminate terrorists in Pakistan within 10 days,” he asserted.
Later, in Badaun, Shah held a meeting at Islamnagar in support of party candidate DK Bharadwaj. Here also he mentioned the lawlessness that allegedly prevailed during SP rule and compared it with the present dispensation. “In UP, mafia or Bahubali (musclemen) are no more there and only Bajrangbali (Lord Hanuman) is there,” he said.
