Nitish ‘vote cutter’, will divide votes to benefit Samajwadi Party: Amit Shah in UP

BJP National President, Amit Shah addressing “Jan Swabhimaan Rally” on Sonelal Patel’s Jayanti at Jagatpur in Varanasi on Saturday. (PTI Photo)

With Nitish Kumar frequently visiting Uttar Pradesh, BJP president Amit Shah Saturday trained guns on him saying the Bihar Chief Minister was a “vote cutter” who was moving across the poll-bound state to help the ruling Samajwadi Party regain power in 2017.

“Nitish Kumar is visiting here frequently. Nitish Babu you come here and promise a good government. You have not able to handle Patna where ‘Gundai’ (hooliganism) is increasing, what will you do in UP?,” Shah asked while addressing the ‘Jan Swabhiman’ rally in Varanasi.

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“Nitish knows that his party can’t win even one seat in UP, but he is still moving across the state campaigning as he wants to divide votes. People like him work as ‘vote katwa’ (vote cutter),” Shah said, adding “You all have to remain alert from such persons who are coming to help the SP”.

The ‘Jan Swabhiman’ rally was organised by Apna Dal MP Anupriya Patel in the backward caste-dominated Rohaniya Assembly segment of Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency to mark the 67th birth anniversary of her father and party founder Sone Lal Patel. Like Patel, Kumar belongs to the backward Kurmi caste.

Apna Dal had contested on two Lok Sabha seats in alliance with BJP in 2014 and had won both. In the rally, BJP state president Keshav Prasad Maurya announced that the two parties will also contest the next year’s Assembly elections in alliance.

Shah, meanwhile, again accused the SP government of not properly implementing the central welfare schemes in the state and said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been elected an MP from UP and hence UP has the first right on development.

Shah said that youth from eastern UP districts such as Azamgarh, Mau, Mirzapur, Raobertsganj and Allahabad go to Mumbai, Delhi, Gujarat, Bengaluru and Haryana in search of jobs because the successive SP and BSP governments failed to generate employment opportunities in the state.

Hailing the schemes such as ‘Stand Up India’, Startup India and Skill India launched by the Prime Minister “to empower our youths”, Shah said, “We want to develop UP and generate employment here so that people may not have to go anywhere else in search of job but this can only be achieved when our government is formed in UP,” he said.

Shah said that highways in BJP-ruled states have been developed like those in Europe but such development was not possible in UP until both the SP and BSP are thrown out.

The BJP chief said the ongoing tussle between Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle and cabinet minister Shivpal Yadav over the revocation of merger of Quami Ekta Dal in SP was a drama. “Akhilesh thinks people of UP cannot understand all this, but now they (people) have understood (the drama),” he said while Accusing the ruling party of patronising leaders with criminal background. “Akhilesh, your party is full of leaders like Mukhtar (Ansari), Afzal (Ansari), Atiq (Ahmad), and Azam (Khan). If you start throwing such leaders out, then there would be no one left in the SP,” Shah said, adding a similar drama was done in 2012 elections when Akhilesh had denied entry of Atiq Ahmed into the SP but later took him in the party in 2014.

Addressing the gathering Anupriya Patel said that she will carry forward the ideology of “social justice” mooted by her father. “We have to strengthen the (BJP-Apna Dal) alliance to change the picture of the state,” she added.