Sambalpur: Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday sought to take a psychological edge over the rivals by claiming that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has already crossed 300 Lok Sabha seat marks in the five phases of elections held in the country so far.
He said in the next two phases of polls, the BJP will easily touch the 400 seats mark as set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“Do you know how many seats the BJP has got in the five phases of polls? Let me tell you that we have already touched the 300-seat mark. And, we are pretty confident that we will cross the 400 mark in the next two phases of elections,” Shah said while addressing a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rally at Remed Square, which falls under the Sambalpur parliamentary constituency.
He called upon the Odisha people to vote in large numbers to help the BJP reach the 400 Lok Sabha seats target.
The home minister lambasted the Naveen Patnaik government in Odisha as a “non-serious” and “non-performing” administration that is totally “insensitive” to people’s issues and grievances.
“Naveen Patnaik government is a completely non-serious establishment. It has imposed bureaucracy on the people of Odisha. This needs to be voted out of power for the betterment of the people,” he said.
Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan is contesting from the Sambalpur seat.
Apart from Dharmendra, BJP state unit president Manmohan Samal, party’s national vice president Baijayant Jay Panda, Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha member Aparajita Sarangi, and Balasore Lok Sabha member Pratap Sarangi were present in the meeting.
Attacking the ruling BJD over the Rs 10,000-crore chit fund scam in Odisha, Shah announced that after coming to power in the state, the new government would put all the accused in jail and try to refund the money of the affected depositors.
Taking an indirect swipe at V Karthikeyan Pandian, a Tamil Nadu-born bureaucrat-turned-politician who has virtually taken control of the BJD organization and calling the shots in Odisha administration, Shah said, “People of Odisha will never accept the rule of a Tamilian. They will have an Odia man at the helm of affairs after the elections.”.”
Accusing CM Naveen Patnaik of multiple failures, he said, “He speaks of development, but poverty is high here in the state. Distress migration is always reported from Ganjam, the CM’s home district. He speaks of industrial development, but Odisha ranks 29 in the Ease of Doing Business index.”
The Union minister mentioned that the disappearance of Lord Jagannath’s Ratna Bhandar (gems treasury) was a matter of serious concern. He declared that the BJPf, after coming to power in the state, will not only open it but also get all the jewels and gems enumerated by the Reserve Bank of India.
The home minister alleged that the Naveen Patnaik government’s failure had led to the shutting down of eight thousand schools in the state. He also condemned the state government for depriving as many as 26 lakh people of drinking water.
