Pull up your socks, Amit Shah tells BJP leaders

​Hyderabad: The dispassionate style of some State BJP leaders seem to have irked their party chief Amit Shah during his one-day visit to the State to address the presidents of the Shakti Kendra, polling booths and the public meeting at Karimnagar on Wednesday.

According to sources, the saffron party chief held a meeting with State party leaders late in the evening at the party headquarters. Addressing the meeting, Shah stated that he could clearly gaze the brewing resentment of people against the ruling TRS government in the State. However, if the party leadership in the State fails to win the anti-incumbency vote, they cannot hope to come to power in another 20 years in Telangana. Adding, “How long you people want to be like this. Don’t you want to be ministers?” he reportedly asked them.

Further, the BJP chief has made it clear that the national party was ready to extend all its cooperation to the State for the upcoming polls. But, “We should be first or second, not third. Either we should be in the ruling, or in the opposition,” he said, making it clear to the State leaders what the national party wanted them to do in the days to come. For this, Shah had asked them to be well prepared and complete the preparatory meetings for elections in every Assembly segment by October 28.

In addition, the State party was asked to hold youth and community conventions, besides meeting the families of farmers who had committed suicide, village Sarpanches and ward members. He said he would verify all the suggested activities during his visit to State again on October 28 when he would take part in the two-day national convention of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) in the city.

“If you are under any such impression that the party has some kind of secret pact with TRS and KCR, you should delete that from your minds,” Amit Shah said making it clear that TRS-KCR, the MIM and the Congress were the party’s main targets in the forthcoming elections. Also, he asked the State party leaders not to bother much about KCR as the party had won even in States like Tripura and others where the political circumstances that the party had faced were more complex, hard and tough when compared with Telangana.

Asking them to be confident, he also asked to them to ditch individual politics, stressing that there is resentment against the TRS and KCR, and they should focus on converting that resentment to votes. Amit Shah has also made it clear among the other issues that Hindutva would be the main poll plank for the party to checkmate the Majlis in the election campaign.