By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 31 Dec: BJP State President Ajay Bhatt today claimed that the year 2019 had been one full of achievements for the BJP at the national as well as state levels. Addressing a press conference at the BJP State Headquarters on the last day of the outgoing year, Bhatt listed several achievements of the party during 2019 and praised the dedication and commitment of the party workers in achieving the goals.
Bhatt said that, in Uttarakhand, the BJP had been winning all crucial elections beginning from 2014 and the trend only got strengthened in 2019. He said that it was for the first time in the history of Uttarakhand that a party had managed to retain all the five Lok Sabha seats with the opposition winning none for the second time in a row. He credited the central leadership of the party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah for the achievement. This trend, he added, continued in the other polls, too, in the state. He stressed that BJP had not only won an historic mandate for the first time in the state assembly elections in 2017, but had managed to retain its popularity and strengthen it in the year 2019, winning all the five Lok Sabha seats, the Panchayat Polls and Pithoragarh Assembly bypoll. He added that the party workers across the state deserved credit for the party’s performance and that 2019 was also a year, in which the BJP managed to raise its membership to 26 lakhs in Uttarakhand.
He said that in spite of the great performance by the BJP Governments at the Centre and the state, had the achievements not been highlighted at the booth level by the party workers, the party could not have performed so well. Bhatt also paid tribute to the late Prakash Pant, who passed away in June this year, and said that Pant’s demise was a huge personal loss not only for him but to the entire party and the state, as well. Pant was a great leader with a far reaching vision.
At the state level, too, the BJP Government was doing well and, for the first time ever, externally aided projects to the tune of Rs 20,000 crores had been brought to the state. Bhatt reminded that many long held up projects like Jamrani Multipurpose Hydro Project were re-launched, and adequate budget had been provided to take these projects forward. He said that the Government would soon list its achievements before the media on the occasion of the completion of its 3 years in office.
He expressed the hope that 2020 would also bring good results for the BJP at the state and the national levels.
The BJP State President also criticised the Congress and other opposition parties at the national and state levels for spreading rumours and misinformation regarding the CAA and the NRC and said that, so far, there had been no action taken on NRC by the Government and, therefore, the Congress and the other parties were just creating a false rhetoric to disturb the nation’s peace. He said that Muslims had nothing to fear from CAA as it was only aimed at granting citizenship to persecuted minorities from 3 neighbouring countries and not at taking away anyone’s citizenship. He claimed that Congress wanted to create a votebank for itself among the Rohingyas, who were not refugees but intruders in India.
Senior BJP leaders Dr Devendra Bhasin, Veerendra Bist, Shadab Shams, Sanjiv Verma, Vishwas Dawar and Baljeet Soni were among those present on the occasion.