After sweeping Bihar council polls, Amit Shah tells BJP cadre to focus on UP

After Lalu Prasad’s RJD and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) alliance suffered a severe setback in the recent Bihar Legislative Council election at the hands of the BJP, party chief Amit Shah has directed the party cadre to focus on Uttar Pradesh. The UP panchayat elections, which is to be held in September-October of this year, will be a stepping stone for the 2017 Assembly Election in Uttar Pradesh. Speaking to partymen, Amit Shah said, “if the BJP won the panchayat elections it stood a good chance of winning the 2017 Assembly polls.” A report in The Hindu noted that Shah told BJP cadre that the onus of UP panchayat polls victory was on the MPs. [caption id=“attachment_2341220” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “]  BJP president Amit Shah. PTI[/caption] Wining legislative council polls in Bihar has bolstered BJP’s resolve and the party is sure they will win it big single-handedly in Uttar Pradesh. Amit Shah met party members recently in Kanpur to discuss the party’s poll strategy in Uttar Pradesh and allegedly told them to try every trick in the book to ensure a BJP government in UP in 2017. As Ratan Mani Lal noted on _Firstpost_ : , “In fact, his call to use dal, bal aur bahubal (party, strength and muscle power) to ensure BJP victory received a rousing response since the proceedings were dominated by examples of rising crime and the poor law and order situation in the Akhilesh Yadav regime in the state.” Chiding the state MLAs, Amit Shah, who completed a year in office as BJP president, told them that they had not won a single elction on their own but because of Narendra Modi. “If you want to remain in Modi’s good books, you have to first win the Panchayat election and then the 2017 Assembly election,” the Firstpost article quoted Shah as saying. The party members have been told to hold rallies and protest march and focus on “deteriorating law and order situation” in Samajwadi Party’s UP. “Mulayam Singh has been exposed. His entire party is involved in extortion. It is jungle raj there in the state. In UP, accused are protected and honoured. Officials, women and the public are humiliated,” BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.