Shah’s ‘revenge’ talk outrageous

The “revenge” speech by BJP leader Amit Shah, handpicked by the party’s PM candidate Narendra Modi to oversee all aspects of his campaign in Uttar Pradesh — for obvious reasons the big cherry of the politics of parliamentary polls — should ordinarily shock us, for it is indeed shocking.

But, coming from Mr Shah, can it? This political figure from Gujarat has become known for all the wrong reasons. When he was Mr Modi’s minister of state for home, he was externed from his state by the Supreme Court, which feared judicial trials related to the 2002 riots may not proceed on an even keel in the state if he were around. Mr Shah is also the choreographer of the infamous Gujarat “stalking” case, in which a young woman was ceaselessly tracked by Gujarat police, according to a news video that has surfaced, under his explicit instructions to please “Saheb”, whoever that mysterious individual may be, within Gujarat’s borders and in other states. Such a personality, marked out by explicit dubiousness, might have been kept under wraps by a political party, one might expect. But Mr Shah was promoted to BJP general secretary when Mr Modi acquired national prominence.

Not long afterwards, he arrived in UP as the Gujarat CM’s principal agent (Mr Modi is widely thought to rely on his own personnel, and not depend on local BJP units) charged with preparing the ground for the Lok Sabha polls. His hate speech in Shamli and Bijnor, two districts of western UP, a region that was quite unexpectedly rocked by prolonged communal riots involving Hindu Jats and local Muslims six months ago, may be seen to be in pursuance of this assigned task. The UP police has registered cases against Mr Modi’s pointman under the Representation of the People Act and under Section 53A (promoting enmity on ground of religion, race, and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) of the IPC. He had explicitly asked Jat audiences, the powerful landowners of the region, to “take revenge” for the “insults” suffered by them last year by pressing the right button while voting since the age of using guns and other weapons was long past.

The communal undertone of such a remark has been noted by the EC, which has sought a reply from Mr Shah. BJP president Rajnath Singh has already jumped to Mr Shah’s rescue. He has sought to put another spin on the whole thing by saying that his general secretary had only urged people to vote appropriately in order to teach the state government a lesson for its maladministration. This is unconvincing, but it is now up to the EC to decide.