Amit Shah’s roadshow: Brief and pointless

Mangaluru: Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s roadshow in three locations, Byndoor, Udupi, and Mangalore, in the coastal assembly constituencies, was a lacklustre event on Saturday. Though the crowds were sizeable, they wanted to hear his speeches. There were a number of places where he could have made a brief speech, but that did not happen. He just waved at the crowd. Only BJP workers waved back, and in some places, he was showered with flowers.

At Mangalore city the roadshow was shorter as it was just about 0ne kilometer between Clock tower and Manjeshwar Govinda Pai circle via KS Rao road. He later had a closed door meeting with the party workers at the hotel Ocean Pearl and stayed there overnight.

At Siddapur (Byndoor constituency), there were about 4,000 to 5,000 people who witnessed the roadshow in a 1.5 kilometre long route. Amit Shah later spoke here to say that central government has opened an office of the National Investigation Agency in Bengaluru to quickly deal with the terror and anti-social situation. This was done with the intention of keeping the coastal districts safe from terror and anti-social activities. While it was in office, the previous Congress government dropped all charges against PFI activists.

According to Amit Shah, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s Constitution did not include any provisions for religiously-based discrimination. Therefore, the BJP government eliminated the 4% Muslim reservation and gave it to Lingayats and Vokkaligas equally instead. Shah asked the audience at Katapady in the Udupi district “Congress leaders are saying that Muslim reservation will be reintroduced if Congress is voted to power, so whose quota will they will scrap later?”

According to Shah, the BJP-led government in Karnataka eliminated the four percent Muslim reservation because the constitution does not contain a clause that would permit such a provision based on religion. The BJP government, according to Shah, increased the number of reservations for the SC, ST, OBC, Lingayat, and other communities, but the Congress has promised to reinstate reservations for the Muslim community. D K Shivakumar, the president of the KPCC, should specify which community will lose its reservation. BJP will form the government in Karnataka and the Muslim reservation will not be allowed here,” he said.

Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, leaders of the Congress, have plans to make Karnataka their ATM once more, according to Shah, who referred to their campaign stops as “electoral tourism.” Shah remarked that while the entire world was praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the AICC president was comparing him to a poisonous snake. He then asked the audience if they thought Mallikarjun Kharge’s statement was accurate or not. Every time they criticised Modi, the BJP grew stronger, he said.

Shah made fun of Congress for handing out guarantee cards in Gujarat, Assam, Tripura, Manipur, and Uttar Pradesh, where they completely failed. In addition, he queried the crowd of party supporters about their desire for the construction of the Sri Ram temple in Ayodhya, alleging that the Congress had been ignoring it for the previous 70 years.

According to him, “Modi brought the court judgement and started the temple construction, and it will be finished by 2024.” Shah referred to the coastal region as the BJP’s “bastion” and argued that not a single seat should be given to the Congress there. “Voting for the JD(S) is voting for the Congress because the JDS is the Congress’ B Team. You shouldn’t vote for JDS if you want to defeat Congress, he advised.

The PFI, the anti-national group that killed BJP member Praveen Nettaru, was outlawed by the Modi administration. The Congress government under Siddaramaiah had withdrawn the cases registered against the PFI, he said adding that the Congress would compromise even national security for their vote bank politics.

‘Choose between Rahul Gandhi’s backwards government and Narendra Modi’s double engines. The PFI will return if you select the

reverse gear government.