The Congress has termed the rally of the Bharatiya Janata Party national president Amit Shah a “flop show” while citing it as a sign of the organisational deteriorated purportedly in the BJP in Uttarakhand. Various party leaders of the Congress cited the limited number of people on the occasion, adding that thin public attendance was a sign of the anger in honest people who now think that their access to their own money has been restricted, said Congress leaders. The Uttarakhand Pradesh Congress Committee president Kishore Upadhyay also went on to state that based on Shah’s speech in Dehradun, one would conclude that the Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi is a major threat to the BJP.
Addressing the media in Dehradun on Sunday, the PCC president Kishore Upadhyay stated that the Congress vice president was a major threat to the BJP considering the fact that the BJP national president had dedicated about about half of his speech in Dehradun on Rahul Gandhi. The repeated refererence to the Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat in his speech also made it appear as if the Congress-led Uttarakhand Government is one that poses a real challenge to the BJP in India. The PCC chief further recalled the Assembly bye-poll elections which Congress won in Uttarakhand after the BJP-led NDA Government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office at the Centre. The Congress party also achieved a resounding victory in the Panchayat elections on top of which the Central Government’s purported conspiracy orchestrated to impose president’s rule in Uttarakhand was also foiled by the Congress-led State Government, Upadhyay stated. He further opined that the BJP was interested mainly in its agenda of being in power and its leaders were least bothered about Uttarakhand and its people.
The PCC chief also spoke of the plans made by the PCC to commemorate the birth anniversary of independent India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on Monday in the high altitude area of Mana village near Badrinath which is also the last village on the Indian side of the Indo-Tibet border region in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand. Stating that both Nehru and Indira Gandhi had maintained close links with the Uttarakhand region before state formation, the PCC has planned to organise a range of events last five days in memory of both Nehru and Indira Gandhi. He further stated that the Congress was fully prepared for its Satat Vikas Sankalp Yatra to be started on the birth anniversary of Indira Gandhi on November 19 and pass through all the 70 Vidhan Sabha constituencies of Uttarakhand raising public awareness on the works done by the State Government and the “problems” created by the BJP-led Central Government.
The PCC chief spokesman Mathura Datt Joshi said, “In the 2.5 years in office of the BJP-led Central Government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi the centre had not given even ` 2.50 to the state despite which the Congress-led State Government retained its focus and efforts on public welfare. The poor attendance of people in the BJP national president’s rally is a befitting reply of the public to the BJP.”
Meanwhile, in a statement released to the media, the Uttarakhand Pradesh Congress Committee chief publicity coordinator Dhirendra Pratap stated, “In the same manner in which the BJP national president had tasted heavy defeat in the Bihar Vidhan Sabha elections and went back empty handed to Delhi, the party’s national vice president returned empty handed from Dehradun. The small number of people in Sunday’s BJP rally has made it clear that the public of Uttarakhand is fed up with the maladministration and and autocracy of the BJP at the Centre and has decided to bring Congress Government back in 2017,” he said, while adding “ a few thousand people attending Shah’s rally is enough to make the BJP despair”.