BJP president Amit Shah spoke at the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha, the RSS’s highest decision-making body, on Saturday. The conclave passed resolutions on affordable education and health care.
Till Sunday morning, various affiliated bodies of the RSS, including the BJP and the ABVP, will make presentations on what they have achieved in the last one year and what they have planned for the coming year.
Mr. Shah is believed to have listed the achievements of the BJP government and called this year’s budget as poor-friendly that “focused” on agriculture.
On Sunday, there is likely to be a discussion on whether the RSS’s uniform (gana vesh) needs a change. While there is a strong buzz that the Khaki shorts will be replaced, an insider cautioned that the proposal might get rejected. “This proposal was discussed in 2010 too, but rejected,” he said.
The meeting passed resolutions on affordable education, with suggestions for more budgetary allocation for education and a greater community participation. “Inadequate allocation for education and lack of priority for education in the government policy during the preceding years have left open this field to institutions aiming for profits,” the resolution said. It made no reference to “anti-national” activities on campuses, a key RSS theme that also figured in the report of Sangh general secretary Suresh (Bhaiyyaji) Joshi on Friday.
RSS Akhil Bharatiya Sampark Pramukh Aniruddha Deshpande refused to discuss the issue at his press conference.
The resolution, however, did call for value-based, nationalistic, employment-oriented and skill-based education for each child.
The health resolution called for medical facilities in small towns and villages and made a case for more philanthropic health care efforts. It also called for medicines to be brought within the reach of the people. While there was much emphasis on social justice and a call to end caste discrimination, an insider said he had not yet seen any draft of a resolution on the issue.
Number of ‘shakhas’ goes up
Even as the BJP has seen its political fortunes rise dramatically in the two years — apart from two serious setbacks in Delhi and Bihar elections — its ideological mentor RSS also seems to have registered a quantum jump in the number of its ‘shakhas’ or branches.
RSS joint general secretary Krishna Gopal said here on Friday that the number of daily shakhas in the last one year had jumped by 5,524.
He said the number of branches — where RSS volunteers gather daily in the neighbourhood for morning exercises and ideological discourses in parks — at present is 56,859. Last year at the same time this number was 51,335.
The annual number of shakhas is reported at this time of each year when the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha, the highest decision making body of the Sangh, meets in some city of India.
The number of shakhas had increased by 10,413 between 2012 and 2015, and the acceleration has quickened in the last one year. This also happens to be a time when there has been considerable debate on tolerance in India and core Hindutva issues such as conversions, Ram temple, ‘love jihad’, etc.
Mr. Gopal also claimed that the largest number of shakhas were those attended by youngsters, seeking to dispel the impression that the young were not enamoured of the Sangh.
The number of shakhas of the Sangh was declining in the last decade but has picked up in recent years and is at a new high in recent years.
