The Hindu : New Delhi News : BJP going all out to win over minorities

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New Delhi

BJP going all out to win over minorities

Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar

Party completes first stage of poll preparations

No community is untouchable:
Harsh Vardhan
Workers’ views will be given due weightage

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party has completed the first stage of its preparations for the upcoming Delhi Assembly and Lok Sabha elections by organising meetings between national organisation general secretary Ram Lal and State unit president Harsh Vardhan with the presidents, guardians and workers of 10,300 booth committees across the Capital. It specially used these meetings to win over members of the minority communities and bring them into the party fold.

Dr. Vardhan said on Saturday that through the meetings the party wanted to dispel the unfounded notion that the BJP does not like Muslims and Christians.

“Members of these communities have supported the party in the past too and that reflects in how we won all four seats in Wazirpur and three out of four in Seelampur in the municipal elections last year,” he said.

“We also believe that BJP is not untouchable for any community and likewise no community is untouchable for it,” he said, adding that it is merit which primarily determines who gets a ticket in the party.

Stating that in a large number of booths, members of the minority community are in charge of the party work, Dr. Vardhan said the party had given tickets to seven Muslim candidates in the 2007 MCD polls and one had won.

This time too, he said, “the views of each worker about the selection of such probable leaders who could win in the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections have been ascertained. Their views would be given special weightage at the time of distributing tickets and the best candidates would be chosen.”

During the interaction with the booth-level functionaries, proper directions and guidance was given to them on how to apprise the voters at their doorstep about the “failures and anti-people decisions of the UPA Government at the Centre”. The meetings that had gone on from May 23 to June 3 were used to inform workers about the national strategy formed by the party to make price spiral, internal and external terrorism, appeasement, corruption and anti-people policies as major issues for the elections, he said.

“Only good governance of BJP can provide relief to the people of Delhi,” he said, adding that the masses had suffered from corruption, sealing, displacement of industries and residential properties, scarcity of water and power and mismanagement of transport.

For the elections, BJP would also be raising issues like the inconvenience caused by the Bus Rapid Transit Corridor, terror of Blueline buses, negligence of villages, plight of 50 lakh residents of unauthorised colonies, pollution in the Yamuna, pollution of environment and increase in crime. Dr. Vardhan said the party is confident of winning the Delhi Assembly elections and thereby making it the 13th State that would come under the rule of BJP and its allies.

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