Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted today that dynasty politics has "ended" and voters are rewarding hardworking leaders, as he set the tone for 2019 Lok Sabha elections, saying it is not the time to look back but to move ahead and work for a win in the next polls.
In his address to a meeting of all BJP 'morchas', which focus on groups like farmers, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, women and youths, Modi said people can differentiate between his government and the ones before it and claimed that there is no allegation against the current dispensation, sources said.
While for other parties self and family come first, for the BJP government the nation and people hold utmost priority, Modi said, according to party general secretary Bhupender Yadav who briefed reporters on the PM's speech.
The first such meeting of all wings of the party is seen as an attempt by its top brass to galvanise its rank and file in preparation for the general elections, which are less than a year away.
"Dynasty politics has ended and leaders trying to win over the masses with their hard work are being rewarded. Our aim is not family first, which may be the goal of other parties, but nation first," the prime minister said, distinguishing between 'parivarwaad' (dynasty) and 'parishramwaad' (hardwork).
Modi described these 'morchas' as the party's front organisations and recalled that Amit Shah, now the BJP president, worked in Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) as he rose from the ranks.
He asked them to connect people, especially first-time voters, to the party's ideology and inform them about his government's schemes centred on women, farmers and the poor among others ahead of the next Lok Sabha polls.
"Now is not the time to look back. We have to march on," he said, according to a leader present in the meeting said.
In his speech, BJP president Amit Shah said the party should aim to get over 50 per cent of votes in the coming elections and this will make alliance of opposition parties against it inconsequential. Even the Congress in its heyday could never get half of the total votes, he said.
He said over 22 crore families had benefitted from the Modi government's schemes and asked the all seven 'morchas' to reach out to them in their target segments. He asked them to focus especially on youths as they work for the next elections.
Yadav said the recent 'gram swaraj' campaign launched by the central government and the BJP to bring over 21,000 villages, which have a large Dalit and tribal population, under various welfare measures of the government had fully succeeded.
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