Bhopal, Aug. 20: BJP president Amit Shah has said that there is no age bar on contesting polls, reopening an intense debate in the party on whether 75 should be the cut-off age for exit from electoral politics.
" 75 paar wale bhi lad sakte hain chunav, koi niyam ya parampara nahin hai (those above 75 also can contest polls. There is no rule or convention to suggest otherwise)," Shah said here on Saturday during a trip to Madhya Pradesh.
The remarks immediately enthused two ruling BJP MLAs dropped from the Shivraj Singh Chouhan cabinet on grounds of advanced age. One of them, the octogenarian Babulal Gaur, said: "Amit Shahji ne Bhopal aakar doodh ka doodh, paani ka paani kar diya (Amit Shah came to Bhopal and made everything clear). I am a 10-time MLA and I will contest the 2018 elections too," the 87-year-old former chief minister said.
Gaur's party colleague, Sartaj Singh, said they had been told to step down as state ministers on age grounds. "We were told that the central BJP leadership had set an age limit," Sartaj, 76, said.
Outside Madhya Pradesh, Anandiben Patel had resigned as Gujarat chief minister and Najma Heptulla as Union minister last year. Both were touching 75. While their resignations were the result of a combination of factors, the focus on the age factor was considered significant.
When the Narendra Modi government took charge in May 2014, nobody above 75 was inducted. Veterans L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Yashwant Sinha were drafted into the BJP's Margdarshak Mandal, a near-defunct advisory body. One exception has been Kalraj Mishra, who remains Union minister at 76.
In Bhopal, Gaur recalled that Morarji Desai, the first non-Congress Prime Minister, was 81 when he had humbled the might of Indira Gandhi and son Sanjay in 1977. Desai's successor Charan Singh was 79 when he took oath as Prime Minister.
The movement against Indira and the Emergency she had clamped was spearheaded by a septuagenarian, Jayaprakash Narayan, just as the India Against Corruption campaign against the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government was spearheaded by octogenarian Anna Hazare, Gaur said. He pointed out that Congress chief ministers Virbhadra Singh (Himachal) and Amarinder Singh (Punjab) were both above 75.
Earlier, Shah predicted that the BJP would rule the Centre for 50 years. " Hum satta mein paanch ya dus saal ke liye nahi, 50 saal ke liye aaye hain. 40-50 saal ki satta ke madhyam se is rashtra mein ek vyapak parivartan khada karenge (We have come to power not for five or 10 years, but for 50 years. Forty to fifty years in power will help us bring in sweeping changes in the country)."
When one leader, Indore MLA Sudershan Gupta, asked Shah about possibility of simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly polls, the BJP chief backed the idea and said the party would launch a "one nation, one election" campaign.
Shah responded to Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee's remark that she favoured Prime Minister Narendra Modi and not Shah because of the BJP chief's "dictatorial style". "It is very good that Mamata Banerjee has at least appreciated the Prime Minister," Shah said.
"Everybody is scared. Super dictatorship is going on. How can a party president take a meeting of ministers? Who is the PM - Modi or Shah?" Mamata had asked while speaking to a news channel and referring to the presence of Shah during meetings with Union ministers.
During his Madhya Pradesh visit, Shah has discouraged leaders from showering praise on him, asking state BJP chief Nandkumar Chouhan to cut down his speech welcoming him yesterday and pointing out that he was in Bhopal to discuss organisational matters and poll preparedness, not for a ceremonial reception.
Shah is said to have set chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan a target of winning 200 of the 230 Assembly in next year's polls and netting all 29 Lok Sabha seats in 2019.
