RANIGANJ (Pratapgarh): With the campaign for the UP elections about to reach the middle point,
BJP chief
Amit Shah has aggressively raised the pitch, challenging political opponents to turn the contest for India's largest state into a referendum on demonetisation.
“Demonetisation is, without doubt, one of the key is sues. PM
Narendra Modi has been talking about it in his public meetings and we also refer to it. That our rivals should also highlight it is only logical. They are welcome to turn the polls into a referendum if they so wish. BJP will gladly accept the challenge,"
Shah
told reporters.
Shah did not touch upon “notebandi“ in his stump speeches as he heli-hopped through the districts of Kaushambi, Pratapgarh and Amethi. With crowds applauding his attacks on Congress-SP, Shah claimed BJP was heading towards a two-thirds win, with 90 seats in the first two phases.
He rebutted the contention that BJP's decision not to field a single Muslim candidate showed it did not wish to take Muslims along. “The SP-Congress alliance and
BSP have given a disproportionate number of tickets to Muslims. Since you talk of polarisation, should you not be asking them why they have given disproportionate representation to a community?“ Shah asked. BJP, he said, did not believe in dividing people into categories.
When told that BJP's sweep of the 2014 LS polls in UP meant there was no Muslim representative from the state in the lower House, he said, “It is people who elect who should represent them, and not BJP.“