UP Elections | Amit Shah to BJP leaders: ‘Focus on polling booths’

Union Home Minister and BJP leader Amit Shah (Illustration: Moneycontrol)

Union Home Minister and senior BJP leader Amit Shah, on a visit to Uttar Pradesh, has asked local leaders to focus on polling booths to ensure the party is voted back in the country’s most populous state that holds assembly elections in early 2022.

Speaking to reporters, BJP state president Swatantra Dev Singh said Shah told BJP workers on November 12 that booth "jeeta toh UP jeeta (win the booth and you win UP)".

A polling booth, or a polling station, has remained the mainstay of BJP’s election strategy to ensure support for the party at the grassroot level. Shah’s UP visit is being viewed as an indication that he would actively campaign for the ruling party in the state, PTI reported.

This is Shah’s second visit to the state in less than a month. The home minister was in the state on October 29 to launch a BJP membership drive in Lucknow.

“Today reviewed the preparations for the UP assembly polls with assembly in-charges in Varanasi,” he tweeted.

Shah told workers that it was them and their “strength” that would BJP’s win the UP elections, Singh said.

Shah was addressing a meeting called to discuss poll strategy for the upcoming state elections. Singh, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Deputy CM Dinesh Sharma, Union Minister and BJP's UP in-charge Dharmendra Pradhan along with leaders responsible for in charge of all the 403 assembly segments were present in the meeting. The target was to win more than 300 seats, Singh said.

Singh also said Shah emphasised the need to improve public relations and “making more and more people party members”.

He added that discussions included proposals to encourage people from other parties to join the BJP “on a large scale”, PTI reported.

Shah also told party workers that all questions related to the Ram mandir were answered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has laid the stone of the temple and made the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor, Singh added.

Shah reached Varanasi, which is Modi’s parliamentary constituency, on November 12. He first visited Lanka Crossing to garland a statue of Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya and then proceeded to Hastkala Sankul (trade facilitation centre for handicrafts) for the meeting.

Shah will visit Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav's Lok Sabha constituency Azamgarh on November 13, while the opposition leader will be in Gorakhpur, the UP CM's home turf, to start the third leg of his "Samajwadi Vijay Yatra".

(With inputs from PTI)