PM Modi being garlanded at the concluding session of the National Executive Committee meeting of the party's all wings (morchas)'.
Setting the tone for 2019 general elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said that dynasty politics has “ended” in the country and voters are now rewarding hardworking leaders.
Addressing a meeting of all BJP ‘morchas’, the prime minister said that it is not the time for the BJP workers to look back but to move ahead and work for a win in the next polls.
PM Modi further added that people can differentiate between his government and the ones before it and claimed that there is no allegation against the current dispensation, PTI reported quoting its sources.
According to party general secretary Bhupender Yadav, the prime minister pointed out that for other parties, self and family come first, but for the BJP government, the nation and people hold utmost priority.
It was first such meeting of all wings of the party that consisted of various groups like farmers, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, women and youths.
The meeting of all BJP morchas is seen as an attempt by the party top brass to galvanise its rank and file in preparation for the general elections, which are less than a year away.
“Dynasty politics has ended and leaders trying to win over the masses with their hard work are being rewarded. Our aim is not family first, which may be the goal of other parties, but nation first,” the prime minister said, distinguishing between ‘parivarwaad’ (dynasty) and ‘parishramwaad’ (hardwork).
Modi described these ‘morchas’ as the party’s front organisations and recalled that Amit Shah, now the BJP president, worked in Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) as he rose from the ranks.
He asked them to connect people, especially first-time voters, to the party’s ideology and inform them about his government’s schemes centred on women, farmers and the poor among others ahead of the next Lok Sabha polls.
“Now is not the time to look back. We have to march on,” he said, PTI quoted a leader present in the meeting as saying.
Inaugurating the day-long programme held at Kedar Nath Sahani auditorium of the Shyama Prasad Mukerjee Civic Centre in central Delhi, Shah assigned various tasks to the cells, including visits to 22 crore families which benefited from schemes like Jan Dhan, Ujjawala, Saubhagya, Mudra and others.
"The government through its various schemes brought changes in the lives of 22 crore families. In the coming one year, these cells will connect to these families and apprise them of the benefits of the government schemes," Yadav quoted Shah as saying.
In his speech, BJP president Amit Shah said the party should aim to get over 50 per cent of votes in the coming elections and this will make alliance of opposition parties against it inconsequential. Even the Congress in its heyday could never get half of the total votes, he said.
Yadav said the recent ‘gram swaraj’ campaign launched by the central government and the BJP to bring over 21,000 villages, which have a large Dalit and tribal population, under various welfare measures of the government had fully succeeded.
News agency IANS quoted its sources as saying that Shah also asked the party's minority cell leaders to visit Muslim families and apprise them of the government's move on the issue of triple talaq. Similarly, he asked the party's women cell leaders to visit households and make women aware about the schemes that were bringing change in their lives.
He asked the leaders of the OBC Cell to convince the community as to how the government's efforts to give a constitutional status to the OBC commission was thwarted by the opposition led by the Congress.
The day-long meeting of the National Executive members of all eight morchas (cells) was held on the day the Bharatiya Janata Party under the leadership of B.S. Yeddyurappa formed the new government in Karnataka.
(With agency inputs)
