Polls to decide future course of UP for next 20 years: Amit Shah
Dadri: Continuing with the efforts of 'changing perception', Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is leaving no stone unturned in appeasing the voters of western Uttar Pradesh. On Thursday, Union Home minister and senior party leader Amit Shah again visited Mathura and Greater Noida — his second visit to this part of UP in a week.
The party has renominated all the candidates in Mathura (Shrikant Sharma), Dadri (Tejpal Singh Nagar), Jewar (Thakur Dhirendra Singh) and Noida (Pankaj Singh). In the morning, Shah offered prayers at Vrindavan's Banke Bihari mandir and then held a door-to-door campaign in Mathura — one of the three key temple towns after Ayodhya and Varanasi. Experts feel that with the visit of Amit Shah, BJP pushes the factor of projecting the temple town as one of the three symbolic Hindutva bastions.
Further, it is said that BJP is battling an "unpopularity" perception in western UP after a year-long protest by farmers. Jats are a deciding factor in almost all the seats in the western part, where the Rashtriya Lok Dal-led by former Prime Minister Charan Singh's grandson Jayant Chaudhary, has joined hands with Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party this time. Therefore, BJP is focusing on all 63 seats, which are certainly crucial to the party.
Shah also visited the Dadri assembly constituency of Greater Noida in the afternoon and met local shopkeepers of Tughlakpur and also held a door-to-door campaign. However, this Gurjar dominated seat has been ruled by mostly BSP, Janata Dal, BJP and Congress since post-Independence. In 1957, Congress had won the Dadri seat by winning three consecutive elections in 1957, 1962 and 1967 whereas the Janata Dal won in 1991 and scored a hat-trick in 1993. BJP's victory in Dadri started in 1996, following in 2002. But from 2007 to 2012 BSP ruled there. In 2017, the equation changed again and the seat went to the BJP and Tejpal became Nagar MLA. During his campaign, the Union Home minister also distributed a pamphlet, mentioning the state government's schemes and Yogi-government's success stories in the five years across all sectors — health, education, free ration, infrastructure etc.
This apart, Shah in his every campaign seems to be making scathing attacks on Akhilesh's SP, whether it is the law and order of the state or development during his erstwhile regime.
In the evening while addressing a 'Prabhaavi Matdaata Samwad' (Effective Voter Dialogue) at Sharda University campus in Greater Noida, the former BJP president mentioned: "The upcoming polls are not to decide an MLA or a minister or a chief minister, the elections are to decide the future course for the next 20 years of Uttar Pradesh... When we look back at the past 20 years, there were governments of Bua-Bhatija. There was mafia rule and to such an extent that nobody was ready for an investment in the state. There was an era of open extortion."
Further, the Home minister alleged that during the erstwhile non-BJP regime, there would be no legal action against mafia elements if they belonged to a particular community but incumbent Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath did excellent work to fix the law and order situation in the state.
Over 100 seats in western UP will go for elections in the first two phases. In 2017, the BJP had won 76 per cent of the seats in western UP.
