looking beyond Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday called for strengthening the BJP at its roots for a win in the 2019 lok Sabha polls and also sought to promote young faces inside and outside the party. For his part, BJP president Amit Shah wanted partymen to be alert against anti-BJP polarisation in the country.
Addressing the BJP parliamentary party, Modi asked the partymen to not to be on the defensive against the Opposition propaganda and “disinformation”, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar told the newspersons.
“He called for strengthening the party at its roots — booth level — across the country,” Kumar said.
The Prime Minister backed the promotion of young leaders at every level in the organisation and referred to his association with Shah and spoke about how he groomed Shah, 14 years younger to the Prime Minister, sources said.
Modi wanted younger generations to be connected with party work, social work and for building the nation. He noted that the “millennial generation” would be eligible to vote from 2018. Modi turned emotional a few times as he recalled how the party organisation was built in Gujarat and young leaders were groomed by their seniors, including former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He described the poll outcome in Gujarat as a big win for the party which has held the State for 22 years.
No party in power at the Centre had done this well in elections across the country in over three years of tenure as the BJP had done, he said, referring to its winning streak in Assembly elections.
Modi recalled how Vajpayee congratulated him in person when the party fared well in a lok Sabha election from Gujarat, noting that he, then a relatively new entrant to the BJP from the RSS and a General Secretary in-charge of the State, was not widely known in the party, sources said.
In his address, Shah asked party leaders to be alert on galvanisation of Opposition parties against the BJP as the latter was on a winning spree. He attacked the Congress over its claim of a moral victory in the Gujarat polls, saying it was a “laughable exercise” for the Opposition party to see victory in defeat.