Hundreds of Indian students facing ‘deportation’ from Canada stage protest
Lucknow, July 31
Categorically denying any role of his party in the breaking of the grand alliance government in Bihar, BJP national president Amit Shah retorted “should I have pointed a gun to keep them together?”
“Nitish Kumar resigned as he did not want to stay with the corrupt. Should I have pointed a gun to keep them together?” asked Shah while responding to a question about Bihar.
Addressing a press conference on the concluding day of his three-day stay Shah attacked the Congress for not trusting its own MLAs and making them prisoners in a hotel room in Bengaluru.
Denying any possibility of a “return gift” to the three UP MLCs who had quit their seats to facilitate the entry of the CM and his two deputies in the state legislature, he said such a word did not exist in his party’s dictionary.
Shah also played down charges of his party now luring the Yadavs among the OBCs after focusing upon Dalits.
“Please don’t see politics in it. Earlier also I had eaten at the house of a booth-level worker who was a Dalit and on Sunday I ate at the home of another Yadav, a booth-level worker. They are party workers first,” he claimed.
Scuttling rumours of SP MLA Shivpal Singh Yadav’s likely entry into the BJP, Shah said neither was there such a proposal, nor was it being considered.
Reiterating that a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya was very much on the agenda of the party, Shah, however, said it would be built as per the decision of the court or through dialogue among stakeholders.
While Shah asserted that there was not a single allegation of corruption against the three-year old Narendra Modi government he flatly denied anyone from the party being involved in Panama Papers.
He said that even before the Modi government came to power the union cabinet had asked the Supreme Court to set up a committee to investigate the matter.
Responding to a question about the party’s prospects in 2019, Shah said the BJP would emerge with even a greater majority on the basis of development and good governance alone.
Giving a pat on the back to both the Modi and Yogi governments, he quoted statistics to prove how the central assistance was now reaching the most marginalised in UP.
