During the road show staged in course of the party’s Parivartan Yatra that concluded on Monday, the state BJP chief Ajay Bhatt asked the youths who gathered in large number to cheer the leaders to keep calm. “I am appealing to the boisterous youth to exercise restraint while throwing your support behind the BJP. This is a must lest any unruly thing happens and the ruling party blames us for that,” he said. Cautious to let the yarta end on a happy note, he alluded to the proverb ‘All well if ends well’. Observers say that Bhatt seems to have been chastened by his party’s bitter experiences during the March 14 rally which, though starting on an encouraging note with an impressive gathering, ended in sordidness as the party MlA Gaesh Joshi hogged the negative headlines having allegedly thrashed the state police horse Shaktiman in a fit of rage against the ‘repressive’ actions of the mounted police. “Bhatt seems to have derived lesson from the episode that resulted in ignominy for the party. It drained all the positives of the rally and goaded the ruling party to pounce upon the saffron front, accusing it of indulging in cruelty to the extent of beating a mute horse to break its leg.
The party continued to reel under its negative impact for days on end as the unfortunate horse died a few days after it received the lathi blow allegedly from a BJP MlA ,” said an observer.