Individuals may falter but BJP always keeps its promises: Rajnath

PTI, Mar 4, 2022, 6:26 PM IST

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said the BJP never breaks the trust of people and fulfils promises it makes no matter what the cost as he campaigned for party candidates in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.

Addressing a public meeting in Jaunpur’s Malhani, the senior BJP leader and former UP chief minister dubbed Yogi Adityanath as the only ”better chief minister” to have worked in the state. Singh predicted that his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will win ”more or less” the same number of Assembly seats in 2022 polls as it did in 2017, which was 303. ”I can say this with confidence that the BJP will never break your trust. You have seen the work of all political parties in the country and assessed them. I can say that any individual from our party may promise something but not fulfil it, but if the party has made some promise, then it will fulfil it no matter what the cost. This is the character of the BJP,” Singh said. He said the (Bharatiya) Jana Sangh had said in 1951 that whenever it forms the government at the Centre with full majority, it will remove Article 370 which gave special provisions to Jammu and Kashmir and the BJP did it in 2019. ”India should not have been divided on lines of religion but it happened and it was unfortunate. But India’s native Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jews who were left in Pakistan, and besides them those in Bangladesh and Afghanistan as minorities faced religious persecution,” he said. ”They wanted to come to India but India did not have any effective law to grant them Indian citizenship,” Rajnath said. ”We had promised several years ago that whenever we form the government, we will make an effective law to grant citizenship to minority communities facing religious persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan,” he added. Singh said he was the Union home minister when this bill was presented in Parliament and got approved from the Lok Sabha but not from the Rajya Sabha, where the BJP was not in majority. ”When Amitji (Amit Shah) replaced me as Home Minister, he got this bill cleared in Parliament. Today, any minority member from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan facing religious persecution can come to India and we will provide them citizenship to enable them lead a life of dignity here,” he said. Similarly, he said the BJP had promised making a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya and today that promise is also being fulfilled. Singh claimed that only the BJP can bring prosperity to people as he took a jibe on rival parties and their election symbols. ”Lakshmiji does not arrive sitting on an elephant (BSP), or rides a bicycle (SP) or waves hand (Congress) saying hi, hello to people. Lakshmiji comes only on kamal ka phool (BJP symbol),” he said. qFurther stressing his point, Singh listed out public welfare schemes run for cooking gas cylinders, free ration by the BJP-led Centre and the UP government and assured that no poor would be left without a permanent shelter by end of 2024. The Union minister said elections for the six phases of UP are already over and have indicated that the BJP is going to create history by becoming the only party in last four decades to come to power second time in a row. ”Many survey agencies of UP and foreign agencies have concluded that the voters of UP are going to create a new history this time,” he said. The voting in the first six phases of UP polls has made it clear that in 2022 the BJP is going to get more or less the same number of seats that it had won in 2017, he said. ”Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Congress and other smaller groups are trying to create a confusion that the BJP is not going to win as many seats as it had won in 2017. The truth is that even in their groups, if you talk to someone, they would quietly whisper in ears that the BJP is winning but they have to work for their party,” he claimed. Singh said he has been a chief minister of Uttar Pradesh but if there has been a better CM than him to have run the state it was Yogi Adityanath.

”If any government wants to ensure development of a state, then a strict law and order is a prerequisite for it. The kind of law and order Yogi Adityanath has ensured in UP is being lauded not only within the state but also outside it,” he added. Rajnath claimed that the mafia and criminal elements have either gone out of the state or sent in jails. One of the most impressive thing Adityanath has done is that the luxurious illegal buildings constructed by criminal elements have been razed and on that place accommodation for the poor was made, Rajnath said. ”It’s not a small thing to do,” he added.