Karimnagar: Pitching for a change of government in election-bound Telangana, BJP president Amit Shah said Wednesday neither the ruling TRS nor the main opposition Congress can give a push to development in the state.
He also asserted that if voted to power after the Lok Sabha polls next year, the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi will ensure “not a single infiltrator” is left in the country. “Telangana’s development is not possible either under KCR (caretaker chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao) family or (Congress chief) Rahul Baba. They are into break in India while (Narendra) Modiji pursues the policy of make in India,” Shah told a public rally here.
The BJP is testing the electoral waters of Telangana alone for the first time after playing a second fiddle to the TDP, which broke away from the NDA recently, for several years. The BJP president said the Congress, with its support base shrinking drastically, was incapable of becoming an alternative to the TRS.
“Is Congress an alternative to the TRS? The Congress under Rahul Gandhi’s leadership has not been able to win state elections. Today, if you want to see the Congress, you will have to use magnifying glasses,” Shah said, ridiculing Gandhi over a string of electoral reverses since the BJP assumed power at the Centre.
The TRS, Shah said, had failed to keep promises it made to the people of Telangana. “KCR made 150 promises before the 2014 assembly polls but fulfilled not one. He promised he will make a dalit the chief minister but did not honour it. Dalit of Telangana is not on his list. His son (minister K T Rama Rao) or daughter (MP K Kavitha) will be made the chief minister,” he said.
The BJP chief also raked up the issue of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, and said if voted to power again, the Modi government will push every infiltrator out of the country. “Bring the Modi government (back) again in 2019…Let there be no infiltrator in the country. The Bharatiya Janata Party government will make sure that not a single infiltrator is left,” he said.
Targeting BJP’s bitter critic and Hyderabad Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi of the AIMIM, Shah said it was the saffron party alone that could fight people like him and not the TRS, TDP or the Congress. Shah also criticised TRS chief Rao for not celebrating 17 September, the day the erstwhile Nizam’s state merged with the Indian Union, as “Hyderabad Liberation Day.”
“Due to fear of Owaisi and for Muslim vote bank Chandrasekhar Rao stopped celebrating Hyderabad Liberation Day,” he said. Shah flayed Rao for advancing the assembly polls which, he claimed, put a burden of hundred of crores of rupees on the common man.
“Early elections are being held in Telangana out of the fear of (Narendra) Modi,” he asserted. He claimed the KCR government did not join the Modi government’s affordable health insurance scheme ‘Ayushman Bharat’ as it feared the Prime Minister’s popularity will soar even further.
Repeatedly referring to the Rao government’s failure to keep its pre-poll promises, Shah said none of them, including three acres of land for poor Dalit families, creation of one lakh government jobs and 2-bedroom houses for the poor was fulfilled.
He asked the electorate to vote BJP to power in Telangana so the state could prosper like those ruled by the saffron party. Shah also addressed a meeting of booth-level BJP functionaries in Hyderabad where the strategy for the assembly polls was discussed. The meeting was out of bounds for the media.