Union Home Minister Amit Shah upon his arrival in Bihar's Patna.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: On Thursday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah asked the party’s workers in Bihar to counter Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav’s “vote chori” narrative by telling voters that they want to fill the state instead with “infiltrators”. Speaking at a workers’ rally in Patna, Shah said that Gandhi was carrying out a “ghuspaithi” (infiltrators) yatra.
“They are not speaking of development or roads or education, but they are diverting the issue to ‘voter theft’ which in reality is to save infiltrators coming in from Bangladesh,” Shah said.
Shah also met Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who went to greet Shah at his hotel to snub rumours that he had refused to meet the home minister as well as BJP president JP Nadda during their last visit to the state.
Apart from the Congress-RJD onslaught, the party is also trying to counter Prashant Kishor whose own yatra across the state has gathered momentum. To counter Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party, the ruling BJP-JDU combine is going to send out 10,000 Modi Mitras in every constituency in Bihar and task them with speaking about the developments of the NDA regime, a key plank that Kishor has caught on to.
The party has sent out a mobile number and volunteers have been encouraged to join the initiative via the number. The goal is to have 25 lakh Modi Mitras, with 10,000 such volunteers in each of the state’s 243 assembly constituencies. These volunteers have also been asked to remind young voters about the tough times when Tejaswi’s father, Lalu Prasad Yadav was chief minister.
Previously, the BJP had deputed a team of 98 leaders from both the JDU and BJP to counter Gandhi’s yatra. These leaders, who have been divided into a dozen teams, each headed by senior faces like Sanjay Jha, Samrat Chaudhary, Nityanad Rai, Sanjay Jaiswal etc have been holding workers' conferences across the state till the end of September. Till now, they have covered 150 assembly constituencies, said party leaders.