Ironically, the major deicison of demonetisation taken by the Modi Government created conditions wherein cash starved people preferred to stand in unending queues than listen to the Bharatiya Janata Party national president Amit Shah. Even the party workers, who were brought by being provided free vehicle, had visited Dehradun with a hope that they would get a better chance to withdraw money from ATM or exchange Rs 4000 cash from banks. Due to this reason BJP workers too were keep roaming in search of cash while Shah was delivering his speech.
It will be recalled that BJP had deployed its two cabinet ministers — Dharmendra Pradhan and JP Nadda to make Parivartan Yatra’s beginning successful but they were seen evading questioning glances regarding the ‘sparse’ crowd as if lacking the ability to state that the lesser gathering was due to recent economical surgical strike by union government. Around 10,000 people especially party workers, who had come from parts of Dehrdun, Haridwar and Tehri district, had reached the venue of the rally’s start but they kept moving as if they were restless to reach nearby banks/ATMs
Talking to The Pioneer party leaders said that officially the rally was successful but unofficially it was flop show because the crowd could not be pulled to the venue. Although party leaders and MlAs had booked buses to bring crowds of supporters, people preferred to stand in bank queues because of holiday on Monday, than listen to Amit Shah’s speech.
Interestingly MlAs, who are known to bring crowds os supporters, failed to bring crowd but ex Congress dissidents managed to providing some saving grace preventing the state leaders from further embarrassment before party president. As is known, whenever opposition organises a rally then ruling party is often accused of misusing government machinery to dissuade crowds of participants but this time the administration had made arrangement to facilitate crowd but crowd was thinner than expected. The party could not arrange labourers who carry party flags during rally, because they demanded cash in the denominations of Rs 100/50/20/10 before boarding the bus to the venue. However, the cash starved politician could not facilitate them in advance and its impact was visible at the rally venue.
On condition of anonymity a leader said that timing of Amit Shah’s speech was inappropriate because he reached on time and started his speech as per schedule. There is prevailing notion that party leader comes late so people reach venue at least one hour late but when they reached then they realised that Shah’s speech was over or about to conclude. Even organiser had hoarded huge stock of party flags and such items but these remained unused beside the public entrance.