Intensifying party activity at the grassroots level and formulating action plans for wooing the minorities, Dalits and Adivasis were necessary for achieving the party’s goals of scoring a spectacular win in Kerala in the next lok Sabha election and capturing power in the State, BJP president Amit Shah told his party colleagues in Kerala on Saturday.
On the second leg of his three-day Kerala visit, Shah told the State party’s office-bearers at a meeting in Thiruvananthapuram that achieving these goals without the support of minorities, Dalits and Adivasis would not be easy. There should be systematic efforts to attract these sections, he told the State leadership.
According to sources in the State BJP, Shah was of the opinion that in a State like Kerala where politics was being determined by coalitions, the BJP should do everything possible to broad-base the NDA. The BJP president was of the view that there was still scope for immense improvement
of the party-led alliance, they said.
Shah had started his Kerala tour on Friday at Kochi where he had taken part in several meetings of the party and had held discussions with the top clergy of the Catholic churches in the State including Mar George Cardinal Alencherry, Major Archbishop of the influential Syro-Malabar Catholic Church.
Pointing out that the work among the minorities and Dalits were presently being carried out through various Morchas of the party, Shah told the State leadership in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday that the party should also directly involve in the efforts to attract these sections. Minority communities constitute over 45 per cent of Kerala’s population.
A review of the performance of the State office-bearers also was carried out at the meeting. He praised the State party leadership and workers for the 15 per cent vote-share the NDA had gathered in the last election, but pointed out that this would not be sufficient to achieve the goal of capturing power in the State without which the party could not be fully satisfied.
Shah also held discussions with top clergy of the Catholic Church in Thiruvanantha-puram on Saturday. After meeting Shah, Cardinal Baselios Cleemis of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church and Archbishop Soosa Pakiam of the latin Rite Archdiocese of Thiruvananthapuram said politics did not figure in their talks.
The BJP chief will lay the foundation stone for the party’s new State headquarters building in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday morning. He will also hold a meeting with the full-time workers of the BJP afterwards.
In an interview with a TV channel, Shah said the NDA would win majority of the lok Sabha seats in Kerala in the next general election. “The NDA had bagged 15 percent votes in Kerala in the last election. That shows that the NDA has got a strong foundation here,” he said. The BJP central leadership is reportedly aiming to win 11 of the 20 lok Sabha seats in Kerala in 2019.
Holding Marxist Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan responsible for the killing of RSS-BJP workers in Kannur, Shah said, “BJP activists are being killed in the CM’s district, in his ConstituencyIJ Who is responsibleIJ Is he responsible or notIJ He is responsible because he is the Chief Minister,” the BJP chief said.
At the same time, Kerala’s CPI(M) secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said that Amit Shah would never succeed in realising his dream of capturing power in Kerala. In a Facebook post, he alleged that Shah’s bid was to build the foundation for the Sangh Pariwar in the State using the huge amounts of money collected from corporate houses.