BHUBANESWAR: Laying out the BJP’s road map for the future, the party’s national president Amit Shah outlined a 95-day programme to connect with party workers at the voting booth level across the country.
"I will be meeting booth workers across the country in 95 days, which will take me to Kerala and even the Andaman and Nicobar Islands,” he was quoted as saying at the BJP national executive meeting here.
Even ministers would have to go the booths.
He asserted that even if all the opposition parties had come together for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the BJP would still have bested them. "Political analysts had claimed that the BJP winning 73 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 elections was a one-off affair. But by winning 325 out of 403 Assembly seats, the BJP has not only rejected the analysis of the pundits but also redefined the explanation of a big victory," Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad quoted Shah as saying.
Coming heavily down on Navin Patnaik’s led Biju Janata Dal [BJD] government in Odisha, Shah claimed that 42 per cent of the population of the state are below the poverty line, enduring poor health indices.
He claimed that 41 per cent of the habitations in the rural areas of the state still don't have electricity, while 12 percent are deprived of the potable drinking water facilities.
"The Garib Kalyan agenda of the Modi government has to be delivered to the people of Odisha for which the party has to win the 2019 state elections," Shah said, making a case for expansion of the party into the east.
In a clear indication that the BJP will go after the states being ruled by regional outfits, Shah asserted that the party has convincingly trounced the Congress and it's time to go after other rivals.
"The victory in UP was proof that the BJP can wrest power from regional parties in states. The BJP has defeated political rivals headed by dynasties, besides the politics of appeasement. The politics of performance will now be victorious," Shah added.