Union home minister Amit Shah said on Thursday in poll-bound Bihar that the aim of Rahul Gandhi’s Voter Adhikar Yatra was to protect infiltrators from Bangladesh.
“Rahul Gandhi did a Yatra. The topic was not vote theft. The topic was not good education, employment, electricity, roads…. The topic of the Yatra was protecting the infiltrators who have come from Bangladesh…. This was Rahul Gandhi’s ‘ghuspetiya bachao yatra’,” Shah told party workers at Dehri-on-Sone in south Bihar.
Shah side-stepped any reference to Rahul’s latest allegations against the Election Commission. Contrary to Shah’s claim that the theme of the Congress leader’s Yatra was “not vote theft”, Rahul’s Voter Adhikar Yatra was entirely focused on “vote chori” and the defining slogan was “vote chor, gaddi chhod”.
The BJP has planned to highlight the “ghuspetiya” issue as a key plank for the upcoming elections. Earlier this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised alleged infiltration during a trip to Bihar.
“Should infiltrators have the right to vote and be given free rations? Should infiltrators get jobs, houses, up to ₹5 lakh for treatment?” Shah asked.
He added: “Instead of our youth, Rahul Gandhi and company want to give jobs to the infiltrators.”
Shah reached Patna on Thursday and met JDU leader Nitish Kumar amid a tussle over seat distribution among the NDA allies. The BJP and the JDU are likely to contest a lion’s share of the 243 Assembly seats and distribute the remaining among smaller partners, including the LJP (RV), HAMS and the RLM. The smaller parties have been bargaining hard for an increased share, while the JDU has pitched for contesting at least one seat more than the BJP to symbolically assert its seniority in the state.
Shah, who is the BJP’s chief strategist for the Bihar polls, addressed party workers at two places in a bid to gear them up for the October-November polls and give them talking points.
“Unless the BJP’s booth-level workers and other ground workers unite and make a resolve, electoral victory is impossible,” he told party workers at the second rally in Begusarai, stressing that he had started as a booth president of the party.
In a bid to charge up the party cadres, he asked them to take the pledge to strengthen Bihar and contribute to a developed India by ensuring a two-thirds majority for the NDA under the leadership of Modi. “This time our victory margin should be so big that Tejashwi Yadav wouldn’t dare to contest elections in the future,” he said, accusing the RJD of indulging in corruption.