BHOPAL: Setting an ambitious target of 200-plus assembly seats out of the total 230 seats and over 51% vote to win the year-end assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, the ruling BJP’s national president JP Nadda gave a call to the party’s polling booth heads to connect with people across the state for detailing about party’s achievements and exposing the real political character of the opposition Congress.
“People are waiting for you across the state, go and meet every person and put before them with facts and arguments the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policy of Reform-Transform and Perform. Go and tell them about how MP has made rapid strides during the present regime at the centre and state, spanning from recent 33 railway projects and 5,872 km of rail line projects at an investment of over Rs 84,000 crore to the opening of 14 medical colleges in the state during the last nine years. Go and tell them about Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s government’s ambitious plan of providing 1.24 lakh government jobs,” Nadda said while addressing a gathering of polling booth heads from 35 assembly segments of central MP.
He also appreciated the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government’s recently launched Laadli Bahna Scheme.
“Go and tell the people that Congress means corruption, commission, divisive politics, politics of dynasty and nepotism. Tell them about BJP’s Report Card Culture which entails that what we promise we do, what we say will be done,” Nadda said while appealing to the party workers to work for winning each and every booth and village in the state.
Importantly, the BJP’s target of 200-plus seats for 2023-end assembly polls isn’t new, as five years back also, target of 200 seats was set by the saffron party, but the party ultimately finished with just 109 seats and 41.02% votes against Congress’s 114 seats with slightly lesser 40.89% votes.
Without naming Rahul Gandhi, he took a sustained jibe at the former Congress president, saying, the Congress of today is high on egoism and low on wisdom.
“You (Gandhi) first make casteist slur against most backward castes, when the court asks you to apologize, you don’t apologize. This proves you neither have respect for the country’s law, Constitution nor democracy. It’s time we go and expose the Congress and its leader on it, among masses in MP.”
Making light of the Congress’s ‘Satyagraha’ over Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification from the Lok Sabha, Nadda said “Mahatma Gandhi first started the Satyagraha in 1906 in South Africa and then in 1919 in India for India’s honour and self-rule, but the Congress’s call for Satyagraha is now based to further its high on ego and low on wisdom politics.”
“Go and tell the people, how the Congress’s leader has made casteist slur on most backward castes and isn’t regretting it till date, even after losing his Lok Sabha membership,” Nadda said.
Prior to addressing the BJP’s booth-level heads from 35 assembly segments, Nadda laid the foundation of state BJP’s new state-of-the-art headquarter in Bhopal. “When the PM was elected as leader of the BJP parliamentary party in 2014, he had highlighted the need for the BJP having a proper office in every district of the country. BJP now has well-equipped offices in 290 districts, while similar offices in 115 other districts are being built, land has been arranged for such offices in 123 more districts.”
Two Congress leaders join BJP, while OBC leader sacked by BJP in August 2022 returns to the party fold
Bhopal: Just four days after the Congress made a dent into one of the oldest Yadav families of BJP in Gwalior-Chambal region, by getting in its ranks son of former three-times BJP MLA Rao Deshraj Singh Yadav in Ashok Nagar district, the saffron party responded with three new joining – two of them being from the Congress.
Two women leaders of Congress, including Mona Sustani (considered close to ex-CM Digvijaya Singh’s family), former BSP MLA and presently Congress leader Usha Chowdhary joined the BJP in Bhopal on Sunday.
While Sustani had unsuccessfully contested the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Rajgarh seat, losing by over 4.31 lakh votes to BJP candidate, Usha Chowdhary had won in 2013 assembly polls from Raigaon (SC) seat of Satna district, but finished third on the same party’s ticket in 2018, before joining the Congress.
The third new joining, however, was perhaps the most notable, as Uma Bharti-loyalist OBC leader Pritam Singh Lodhi, who was sacked by the BJP in August 2022 over objectionable remarks for Brahmins, returned to the saffron party fold. Lodhi was recently in news for trying to build a third front in the state with tribal and Dalit outfits.