NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is planning to arm its workers with separate booklets to counter the strident Opposition campaign against the Rafale fighter jet deal and to assuage upper caste anger over the amendments in the Prevention of Atrocities Against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act.
On the Rafale jet deal party workers will depend mainly on the position formulated by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitely. The other booklet will seek to reassure upper caste members that even after the amendments to the SC/ST Act, it will still not be easy to just drag anyone into cases with arrests.
The BJP’s strategy to counter the Congress party’s campaign on the Rafale deal follows the Opposition party fielding senior leaders in state capitals to build up a campaign against the Narendra Modi government.
Sources said that the booklet on Rafale would chalk out the journey of the deal from the time of the UPA government and highlight the reasons for calling off the purchase plan in 2013. The BJP will also drag in Robert Vadra, the brother-in-law of Congress president Rahul Gandhi, in the “conspiracy behind campaign to build pressure on the government to cancel the Rafale deal.”
The booklet on Rafale will be in addition to the exhaustive briefing to the council of ministers headed by Modi, who was briefed of the full details of the fighter jet acquisition plan by Defence Production secretary Ajay Kumar and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.
The BJP also faces raging protests in the election-bound states of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, where upper caste outfits have hit the road against the amendments to the SC/ST Act.State BJP units in both the states have been facing demands to dilute the amendments on the grounds that the law is being exploited to harass members of the upper caste.
Incidentally, Rashtiya Swayamsevak Sangh supremo Mohan Bhagwat, while supporting measures to prevent atrocities against the SCs/STs, had stated that the provisions of the law should not be misused.
The BJP booklet, the sources said, would seek to dispel the notion that the law could easily be misused to slap members of the upper caste with false cases.
Shah meets Yogi as BJP gears up for polls
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