NEW DELHI: BJP president JP Nadda urged the leaders of his party in Punjab on Wednesday to reach out to rural areas in order to make the saffron party ‘number one’ in the state.
Nadda’s statement came in the wake of the party’s oldest ally Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) parting ways with the NDA due to differences over the farm bills enacted by the Parliament in the Monsoon session.
While delivering Kamal Sharma memorial lecture at the BJP headquarters in the national capital, Nadda said that the true homage to the “departed leader will be by working to ensure that the BJP becomes the first choice of the people in Punjab”.
“There is a huge talent base in Punjab. We need to associate such people with the BJP ideologically. We have to move from the urban centres to gain footprints in the rural parts of Punjab,” said Nadda.
Sharma was former Punjab unit of the BJP chief and also a senior functionary of the RSS.
The BJP chief’s assertions to the party workers to gain support base in the rural parts of Punjab gains significance on account of the party’s limitations of being labelled an urban outfit in the state.
The erstwhile SAD-BJP alliance had been a potent political alliance because of the support base of the Sukhbir Singh Badal led outfit in the Punjab, while the saffron outfit was able to transfer the urban Hindu votes to the alliance.
Nadda also lashed out at the opponents, accusing them of spearheading protests against the enacted farms legislations for vested political reasons.
He slammed the Congress for its opposition to laws, saying "while opposing Modi, it has got down to opposing the country and farmers”.
He asked Punjab CM Amarinder Singh to clarify whether scrapping the agricultural produce marketing committees was a part of the Congress’s poll manifesto or not.