BJP president Amit Shah on Saturday described Gujarat as “bastion of the BJP” and expressed confidence that the party would emerge victorious in the Assembly polls scheduled next year while exhorting the party workers to start preparing for the elections.
“Gujarat was and will remain a bastion of the BJP,” Mr Shah said in his first address to party workers in Gujarat after being re-elected party president last month. “The way 2012 assembly polls laid the foundation for the BJP victory in the 2014 parliamentary polls. Similarly next year's assembly polls in Gujarat will determine the outcome of the Lok Sabha polls in 2019,” Mr Shah said at the rally in Gandhinagar.
The BJP president said that the party was now ruling in over a dozen states and at the centre where it was the first party to get absolute majority in the last three decades.
“This is not a political journey but a journey of ideology. Under the successful leadership of Narendrabhai, our government is marching ahead for all inclusive growth taking in to account poor, farmers, labourers, Dalits, tribals, Other backward classes,” Mr Shah said amidst thunderous applause from the more than 10,000 party workers.
“In the last six assembly polls, we have won in four while we lost only in Delhi and Bihar where also our vote share went up despite defeat,” he said defending the party's defeats in two crucial polls, both were seen as referendum on the NDA government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
