If you oppose what people like, how will you get votes: Amit Shah to Rahul Gandhi

Ahmedabad: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday said a party won’t get votes if it opposes everything people like, quipping that it was beyond his capacity to make Rahul Gandhi understand this “simple logic” because even Congress leaders had failed to make him understand it.

He was addressing a gathering in a village near Ahmedabad city.

“During a recent debate in Lok Sabha, (Opposition Leader) Rahul Gandhi asked me a strange question: ‘Why does only his party lose elections every time’. Instead of asking people, he asked me. Rahul Baba, you will get the answer if you understand these two initiatives that I have launched here,” said Shah.

The senior BJP leader said Gandhi should not “get tired of losing” because “the Congress will definitely lose the upcoming assembly polls in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal”.

In the 2029 Lok Sabha elections too, the BJP will emerge victorious under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, he asserted.

“The reason behind our success is that people are connected with our principles. The Congress opposed Ram temple, surgical strike on terrorists, removal of Article 370, Uniform Civil Code, Act against triple talaq and our campaign to drive out illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators.

“Now tell me, if you oppose what people like, how will you get votes? But, it is beyond my capacity to make Rahul Baba understand such a simple logic because even people from the Congress have failed to make him understand it,” said Shah.

During the event at Navi Vanzar, he handed ‘sanad’ (land ownership certificates) to 173 residents. The beneficiaries were originally from Vanzar village on the banks of the Sabarmati river, but were resettled in Navi Vanzar after losing their homes, land and belongings in the devastating floods of 1973.

On the occasion, Shah also inaugurated the “western trunk line”, a drainage network to handle sewage generated by nearly 15 lakh residents living in newly developed areas such as Shela, South Bopal, Shantipura and Thaltej.

He said these 173 persons were shifted to Navi Vanzar when Congress was in power in the state. But, even after the passage of 50 years, they never received the land ownership rights.

“These people were rehabilitated here by you (Congress) in 1973. However, it is Narendra Modi’s party that identified them and gave them land ownership certificates. These residents never agitated or told me about their issue. I had visited this area in the past as an MLA but they never said anything and kept giving us votes too,” said Shah.

“But, we understood their issue and fulfilled their long-pending demand with a sensitive approach, a hallmark of Modi’s development-centric politics. We believe in giving what people want, even before they raise any demand for it,” said Shah.

About the trunk line project, Shah said it will benefit nearly 15 lakh people living in western parts of the city and the project will also solve the issues of drainage overflow in some areas.

He said though people had faced issues due to the lack of such a sewer line, no one protested.

“Yet, the government undertook this work and finished it before the deadline. Rahul Gandhi needs to understand this. Instead, he is trying to decode Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which is not his cup of tea,” said Shah, who represents Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat, which covers several parts of western Ahmedabad.