A three-day training camp of Bharatiya Janata Party’s Rajasthan unit, which ended in Sirohi district’s Mount Abu on Tuesday, emphasised on the strengthening of polling booths and Mandals (divisions), and empowerment of party workers to achieve victory in the 2023 State Assembly election. The participants interacted with senior leaders during the event.
BJP national president J.P. Nadda, who attended the camp on its final day, said the brainstorming on taking the message of “success” of the Centre’s policies to the masses and encouraging the voters to participate actively in the democratic process, would ensure victory for the party. Mr. Nadda accused the Congress government in the State of failure on all fronts.
The camp assumed significance amid allegations of the BJP’s links with the murderers of tailor Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur, as an embarrassed party has found it difficult to respond to the charge that one of the accused was a member of its minority wing. Senior BJP leaders kept a studied silence on the subject during the event.
Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has asked the BJP to “come clean” on its connection with the accused, alleging that the party had helped him in an earlier matter too. He said the BJP leaders had exerted pressure on the police then to drop the case, in which the landlord had made a complaint against him regarding non-payment of rent.
“Even before the police could investigate the matter, the BJP leaders started calling the landlord and warned him not to trouble the accused, as he was a party worker,” Mr. Gehlot said at a press conference in Jaipur on Monday.
Vasundhara Raje absent
BJP State President Satish Poonia, Leader of Opposition Gulab Chand Kataria, Union Ministers Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Kailash Choudhary and Arjun Ram Meghwal and BJP national general secretary Arun Singh were among those who attended the camp. However, former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje was conspicuous by her absence.
Mr. Nadda affirmed that the BJP was the only party which was organising such “systematic and disciplined” training camps for its workers. “Deendayal Upadhyaya, the proponent of the integral humanism ideology, had trained five MLAs in a seven-day programme. Former Vice-President, the late Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, was one of the trainees,” he said.
“Our party does not have a culture of passing the edict... We all work like volunteers. The party workers are our strength and their training is a continuous process,” Mr. Nadda said. The BJP had succeeded in maintaining a balance between the local and national interests, because of which it was continuously getting the public mandate, he said.
Representatives of Mewar division’s Scheduled Tribes presented a “letter of gratitude” to Mr. Nadda, praising the BJP’s decision to field tribal leader Droupadi Murmu as the National Democratic Alliance’s candidate for the Presidential elections.
