Amit Shah at a closed-door meeting on Wednesday sought to exhort NDA leaders to counter the Opposition’s offensive over B.R. Ambedkar that primarily targets the home minister for “insulting” the Dalit icon, sources said.
Around the same time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a rally in Madhya Pradesh’s Khajuraho and accused the Congress of ignoring Ambedkar’s contribution to water conservation.
The twin events were part of the BJP’s desperate effort to prevent the Opposition INDIA bloc from building an anti-Ambedkar and anti-Dalit narrative against the saffron party in general and Shah in particular.
Coinciding with the birth centenary of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the BJP organised a meeting of NDA leaders at BJP president J.P. Nadda’s residence where Shah was learnt to have done most of the talking.
There was no official statement on the issues discussed at the meeting but sources said the Opposition’s onslaught against the BJP over Shah’s “insulting” remarks against Ambedkar formed the main topic of the discussion.
“Shah spoke the most at the get-together, telling the NDA leaders how the Congress was trying to build a false narrative over Ambedkar and obliquely stressing the need for the NDA to counter the Opposition’s narrative jointly,” a BJP leader said.
Andhra Pradesh chief minister and TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu, an NDA ally, was present at the meeting. Two other key allies — Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and Maharashtra deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde — were absent. They were represented by Union ministers Rajeev Ranjan alias Lallan Singh and Prataprao Jadhav, respectively.
Other NDA partners who attended the meeting were JDS leader H.D. Kumaraswamy, Apna Dal’s Anupriya Patel and Jitan Ram Manjhi of the Hindustan Awam Party.
The Opposition has been gunning for Shah since his remarks over Ambedkar in the Rajya Sabha during a discussion on the Constitution raised a political storm. “It has become a fashion to say ‘Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar’. If they (Congress leaders) took God’s name so many times, they would have got a place in heaven for seven rebirths,” Shah had said.
The Opposition said his remarks were an insult to the Father of the Constitution and demanded his resignation.
At the Khajuraho rally that Modi addressed after laying the foundation stone of a river-linking project, the Prime Minister praised Ambedkar for his vision of strengthening the country’s water resources and went on to slam the Congress.
“Ambedkar’s vision and farsightedness contributed significantly to the strengthening of the country’s water resources, their management and dam construction,” Modi said.
“The Congress never paid heed to the country’s growing need for water conservation and never recognised Ambedkar’s efforts as a water conservationist,” he added.