Modi 'only' PM to give befitting reply to Pak: Shah

Moradabad (UP): BJP president Amit Shah on Tuesday said Narendra Modi was the “only” prime minister who had responded strongly to terror activities in Pakistan, likening the Centre’s response to the US action against terrorism.

“We attacked on Pakistan without any delay after the Pulwama attack, while the Opposition leaders were insisting for negotiation, Shah said at a ‘Vijay Sankalp’ rally in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad district.

The Bharatiya Janata Party chief alleged that the Opposition was insulting the soldiers who died in the Pulwama attack by asking questions on the number of casualties in the Balakot airstrike.

“When the country was celebrating after air strikes at terrorist camp, the Opposition here was grieving like Pakistan,” he said in an apparent reference to the Balakot airstrike.

He asserted that the BJP-led NDA would win 74 of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats. It had won 73 in 2014.

Pointing out that Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati were “enemies” earlier, Shah said they had come together now due to “fear” of Modi.

He predicted that the SP-BSP-RLD alliance would fail because “our government is very much popular due to our positive works”.

Shah hit out at Yadav, alleging that all miscreants were there in the former chief minister’s government and crime was on the rise.

But during the present BJP government, he claimed, all miscreants were either in jail or fled the state.

Shah said communal violence and land-grabbing incidents, which he said were normal during the previous dispensation, had become a thing of the past and there was peace.

Listing out the Modi dispensation’s welfare schemes, Shah claimed that for the first time since Independence, the farmers, poor, Dalits and the deprived sections had been feeling that they have their own government at the Centre.

BJP media head Anil Baluni said in a statement that the party organised over 250 ‘Vijay Sankalp’ (pledge for victory) rallies across the country on Tuesday with its tops leaders addressing them.

While Shah spoke in Moradabad, Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal and Uma Bharti spoke in New Delhi, Ghaziabad, Udupi, Vijaywada and Sonipat respectively, he said.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath spoke in Varanasi, Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani in Porbandar, Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar in Panipat and former Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Puri.

Baluni said over 250 such rallies were held on Sunday as well as part of the party’s campaign to highlight the Modi government’s “achievements” and “insults” meted out to the armed forces by Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his allies.