New Delhi: BJP national chief Amit Shah on Saturday said Opposition unity was an "eyewash" but asked party leaders to forget everything for the next seven months and focus only on the "lotus" and "Bharat Mata".
If the choice of words betrayed the BJP's jitters ahead of the general election, due next summer, Shah also referred to "urban Naxals", a term that has divided civil society in the wake of the police crackdown on some rights activists.
Shah congratulated Maharashtra's BJP chief minister Devendra Fadnavis for the August 28 multi-state swoop carried out by Pune police in connection with a Dalit-upper caste violence in January this year.
" Mahagathbandhan (a grand alliance of Opposition parties) is an eyewash and illusion based on falsehood. The BJP has fought and defeated all the parties in the mahagathbandhan in states," Shah told his party's national executive members in his inaugural address as the two-day conclave got under way in Delhi.
"We have to expose the mahagathbandhan's falsehood before the people," Shah said, according to defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman who had been fielded as a "senior party worker" to brief the media.
Earlier, addressing party office bearers ahead of the national executive, Shah had urged them to hurl themselves into ensuring victory in 2019. "Forget everything for the next seven months. Focus only on lotus (the BJP's poll symbol) and Bharat Mata," Shah said.
The BJP also decided to suspend organisational polls to let Shah continue at the helm till the general election. Shah's three-year term as party president ends in January.
"The organisational elections have been deferred so that the party can focus on the elections. Amitbhai and his team will lead the party in the Lok Sabha polls," a BJP leader said, pointing out that organisational elections had been deferred in the past too.
Shah sought to build a narrative around "Bharat Mata" so that the nationalist agenda could be used to push under the carpet irritants like upper caste protests against the newly strengthened law on protecting Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and the discontent over spiralling oil prices.
At the meeting, party leaders took a pledge to make the BJP " ajey" (invincible) while Shah asked them to go all out to turn the 22 crore families who have benefited from various central government welfare schemes into voters for the party.
Shah dismissed the protest against the amended SC/ST (prevention of atrocities) Act by calling it a " bhram" (confusion) being spread by the opponents and said the party would counter the campaign but didn't clarify how. BJP sources said Shah chose to skirt the issue by not giving it much importance.
Instead, he brought up what pro-government media had described as an offensive against "urban Naxals" - Pune police's multi-state raids last month on five rights activists.
"Amit Shahji congratulated the Maharashtra chief minister, who was present there (at the national executive meeting), for the action against urban Naxals," Sitharaman said.
"For the BJP, it is 'making India' and for the Congress it is 'breaking India'," the defence minister added, quoting Shah.
The Supreme Court has extended the house arrest of the five Left-leaning activists till September 12 and described dissent as the "safety valve of democracy".
Shah asked his party leaders to raise the issue of the National Register for Citizens. "Not a single new infiltrator would be allowed in the country under the (Narendra) Modi government," he said.
He brought up the now banned instant triple talaq too while accusing the Congress of stalling the talaq bill in the Rajya Sabha.
The BJP chief described the Prime Minister as the world's most popular leader and said the "charisma of Narendra Modi", coupled with the government's achievements, made for an unbeatable combination.
So all party leaders, he said, should ensure that Modi returned with a bigger mandate than what he had got in 2014.
Modi too spoke at the meeting. The Prime Minister asked BJP leaders not to fall into the "Opposition's trap" but focus only on the party's agenda.
"Victory is certain if you do so," he said, according to sources.
Modi would address the meet's concluding session on Sunday.
