By Sanjay Pandey
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday dropped strong hints that Hindutva would be at the centre of his party’s agenda in the upcoming assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, which are due early next year.
Shah, who addressed two meetings in UP after laying the foundation stones of Institute of Forensic Science at Lucknow and Vindhyavasini Corridor at Mirzapur, focused mainly on the development of important religious places in the state after the formation of the BJP government in the state and at meeting at Mirzapur, about 300 kilometres from here.
”Why did the previous governments not get the Ram Temple constructed….why did they not make efforts to develop the Brij Bhumi (land of Lord Krishna) and Chitrakoot, where Lord Rama had spent several years,” Shah said.
”The previous government did not pay attention to the Hindu religious places as they pursued votebank politics,” he added. He also said that the UP government had launched several projects to develop important Hindu religious places.
Shah also made a subtle reference to the 2013 Muzaffarnagar communal riots and said that in the previous governments people in western UP had been forced to migrate fearing a particular community.
”The situation has changed now….there is rule of law in UP…the mafias have been surrendering before the police,” the former BJP president said.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also stuck to the Hindutva agenda and mentioned development works at Ayodhya, Chitrakoot, Vindhyachal, Varanasi, Prayagraj and other religious places.
He also said that the BJP government at the Centre had corrected the mistakes committed by the Congress government by abolishing Article 370, which gave special status to Jammu & Kashmir.
This story first appeared on deccanherald.com