Adopt UP model to win elections: Shah

Amit Shah formally takes over as the saffron party's president

In his maiden public speech after the ratification of his appointment as BJP president, Amit Shah advised the party to adopt the successful “UP model” of election strategy he had conceived for better prospects in the four upcoming Assembly polls.

Shah’s appointment as BJP president was essentially an acknowledgement of the organisational skills he displayed in cornering 71 out of UP’s 80 Lok Sabha seats in this year's general election, which helped Narendra Modi occupy Raisina Hills with a more-than-comfortable majority.

Shah thanked party leaders for making a “booth-level worker” and a relative youngster with limited experience the party president, and said only the BJP, out of more than 1,200 political parties in India, can do such a thing.

The bonhomie between Modi and Shah was quite visible in not only the praise they heaped on each other but the trust displayed in the party and the government complementing each other to realise the objectives of the massive mandate on which the NDA rode to power. For instance, Shah advised each of the 45 ministers to implement the party’s manifesto through their departments.

On his part, Modi, early in his speech, assured the party president that the government would leave no stone unturned to fulfil the vision of Shah and senior leaders like L K Advani.

He pushed workers to spread the party’s ideology across the country since the move to throw out the Congress from the political landscape was not over.

Shah will be president for a year and half—the remaining period of the three-year tenure of  Rajnath Singh, who became chief last January.

Senior leaders such as L K Advani, Rajnath Singh, M M Joshi, Arun Jaitley, Nitin Gadkari and M Venkaiah Naidu, besides chief ministers of BJP-ruled states, were present at the meeting held at the Jawahar Lal Nehru stadium here.

Urging workers not to be complacent and to have “hunger for victory” to win states held by other parties, Shah said, “Our exceptional success in UP was due to our right approach in social engineering, introducing accountability and transparency in organisational management, widening the scope of direct contact with the cross-sections of society, and winning the confidence of the electorate by consolidating organisational unity.”

He cautioned that elections could not be won in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi, UP, Bihar, Odisha and Uttarakhand by mere slogan-shouting and putting up hoardings, but through commitment and dedication to the party organisation and its objective.