Home Minister and BJP’s principal strategist has assumed full control of Punjab election strategy and yesterday asked the state’s top brass to hit the ground running and prepare to fight alone on all 117 seats.
In his first pre-election guidance to state leaders whom he met for two hours in Delhi last night, Shah said there was no alternative to hard work.
“You have to go to the people and win their hearts. We can’t leave Punjab to its fate. We have to save Punjab," Shah is learnt to have told the participants at the first brainstorming session the BJP held for the elections yesterday.
Sources said everyone agreed that Punjab was “reeling under an economic mess" and its revival was absolutely urgent. Leaders at the meeting said Shah made it clear that “salvaging Punjab from its present economic and social morass was the top priority of the BJP government and the party".
Shah also told the leaders to prepare to go it alone on all 117 seats and assured them that “challenges will be resolved going forward".
Punjab’s economic challenges, drug menace problems, fragile law and order, religious conversions and soil health depletion figured prominently in the meeting, with leaders saying that the state needed investments and, for that, an atmosphere of stability and peace.
The top challenge of getting people to trust the saffron narrative also came up, with Shah and BJP president Nitin Nabin asking the BJP cadre to work hard to “spread the party’s ideology of sabka saath Sabha Vishwas".
Shah gave an example of how the BJP had fixed the economy and law and order challenges in every state it has governed, from Gujarat to Uttar Pradesh and now West Bengal.
“There is no greater need for a double-engine government anywhere more than in Punjab," said sources who attended, with the BJP today kick-starting its national outreach in the state.
Union Housing Minister ML Khattar was in Amritsar today. The Tribune was the first to report recently that all Union ministers will come to Punjab as part of Shah-led outreach, with Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal set to arrive after Khattar.
Nabin will be in Punjab from June 20 to 22 and will visit Ludhiana and Amritsar besides participating in a Yoga Day event in a border area in Amritsar. Nabin’s detailed programme is being finalised.
Before meeting the state leaders yesterday, Shah had met Punjab Governor Ghulab Chand Kataria and discussed the ground situation and challenges.
Yesterday’s meeting was attended by BJP state president Kewal Dhillon, former state chiefs Sunil Jakhar, Avinash Rai Khanna and Shwait Malik, Union minister Ravneet Bittu, former Punjab minister Manoranjan Kalia, Ashwani Sharma, BJP national general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Tarun Chugh, parliamentary board member Iqbal Singh Lalpura, former Punjab minister Manpreet Badal, Fateh Singh Bajwa, state BJP general secretary Parminder Brar and Punjab women’s wing president Jai Inder Kaur.
From the organisational side, RSS leaders — Saudan Singh, who handles northern states, Mantri Srinivasulu, BJP general secretary organisation for Punjab, and Narinder Raina — were present.
