Bhubaneswar: BJP president J P Nadda on Thursday said that though his is the largest political party in the world, it is fighting against family-based parties as other national ones have been reduced to regional outfits.
Describing the Congress as the Bhai-Behen (brother-sister) party, Nadda said that the situation of the country’s oldest party has come to such a pass that its candidates lost deposits in 370 of the 380 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh.
Addressing Odisha BJP’s panchayat level leaders here, he said, It is unfortunate that all national parties have shrunk and the BJP, despite being the world’s largest political party, now fights against the family-based parties in different states. National parties are losing their steam and becoming regional parties.
He asserted that the BJP is the only national party having 18 crore members.
With obvious reference to Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin and her children Rahul and Priyanka, the BJP leader said, The Indian National Congress is neither national nor Indian. It is now a Bhai-Behen party .
He said that the BJP fights against parties of the Abdullah family in Jammu and Kashmir, Chautala in Haryana, Badal in Punjab, Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh, Lalu Prasad in Bihar, Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek in West Bengal, Sibu Soren in Jharkhand, Jagan Mohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh and CS Rao in Telangana.
In Odisha obviously, it is Biju Patnaik’s family which is ruling the roost, Nadda pointed out adding that the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra is now coming out of the family raj.
He did not name BJD president and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in his 37-minute speech.
You are fortunate enough and thank God that you are in a party which is cadre-based and ideology-based, he told BJP members adding that the party believed in the same ideology as it was during the Bharatiya Jana Sangh era in 1951.
Nadda said the party has 302 MPs in Lok Sabha, 92 members in Rajya Sabha, 1394 MLAs across states, 120 mayors and thousands of Zilla Parishad members and local body heads.
The BJP is getting popular among the people, he claimed, adding that the party has formed government in Bihar in 2019, twice in Assam, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, thrice in Uttarakhand and first time in Pondicherry and Manipur.
He also claimed that most of the political parties were in quarantine or isolation during the Covid-19 crisis and it was the BJP’s workers and leaders who gave relief to the people by providing food and mask, and ensuring that the people stranded in different places return home.
He said the Narendra Modi government provided medicines and vaccines to various countries even as India used to depend on other nations during crises in the past.
Nadda alleged that the BJD government of the state has failed to meet aspirations of the people as it is involved in corruption.
Nadda said, We are a national party with regional aspirations. The Modi government has all along promoted Odias and more than 15 people who remained out of limelight have been conferred with Padma awards. A daughter of the soil is also the President of the country.
Slamming the BJD government of Odisha, the BJP president alleged that at least three ministers were involved in murder cases.
Besides, rampant corruption at different levels and people carrying bodies of relatives on cycles and women giving birth on the roadside due to lack of ambulance are classic cases of kusasan’ (misrule), he claimed.
Nadda alleged that even Lord Jagannath’s Ratna Bhandar’ (treasure chest) is unsafe as its original key has gone missing.
He called upon the people to bring the BJP to power in Odisha in the next assembly election due in 2024.
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