Amit Shah’s two-day visit makes BJP’s plans clear for TS

Bharatiya Janata Party National president Amit Shah arriving at the venue for party's Telangana unit village presidents’ convention in Hyderabad on Friday. Photo: Mohammed Yousuf

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president Amit Shah’s two-day visit to Hyderabad, with the purpose of galvanising the party’s rank and file and its frontal organisations, has made it amply clear that Telangana is on top of the party’s agenda.

Despite a hectic schedule, Mr. Shah focussed on all parameters that would strengthen the party, beginning with a party workers’ meeting of Greater Hyderabad unit. He has given a roadmap to the office-bearers of the State unit, met a cross-section of the society, assessed the position of the party’s frontal organisations and Sangh Parivar, and tried to stimulate the village unit presidents of the party to spur the party’s growth from the grass-roots level.

Known as a master strategist, Mr. Shah, who played a key role in bringing the BJP to power at the Centre on its own with the help of Narendra Modi’s charisma, maintained a conspicuous silence on the TRS government in the State and BJP’s rival in Hyderabad – MIM, even as he allowed other leaders to tear into the emerging political combination in Telangana.

Party leaders G. Kishan Reddy, N. Indrasena Reddy, K. Laxman, Nagam Janardhan Reddy and others spared no efforts in targeting TRS-MIM by explaining how the TRS government was failing on all its pre-poll promises and how it was cow-towing the MIM to get a foothold in GHMC. They were highly critical of TRS’ promise of religion-based reservation to Muslims.

By stating that he was more happy for the party getting 23 per cent vote share in the State than it winning 71 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, Mr. Shah tried to infuse inspiration among the partymen here stating that the national leadership was keeping track of their hard work.

Mr. Shah asked the party’s village unit presidents on Friday to take up a membership drive from November 1 full-throttle to realise the goal of bringing the party to power in the State in 2019. “Strengthening the party from the village level will also help the party’s macro plan of making the country Congress-free and BJP-enabled,” the party chief said.