Resolve to Make Narendra Modi PM Again, Nitin Gadkari Tells BJP Workers

Nagpur: Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Saturday asked BJP workers to resolve to make Narendra Modi the country's prime minister again in 2019.

It was the BJP's might that has compelled the bickering opposition parties to come together, Gadkari said at the inauguration of the national convention of the party's Scheduled Caste Morcha here.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will work with full determination to make Narendra Modi the Prime Minister again, he said.

"I want to ask you to make a resolution to work with full conviction and strength so that in the coming elections we once again form BJP government with full majority and make Narendra Modi Prime Minister again for doing justice to backward sections and making India prosperous, progressive and powerful," Gadkari said.

The Union transport minister's statement comes after his recent remarks wherein he apparently asked the BJP leadership to take responsibility for setbacks in the assembly polls. He, however, denied that he ever targeted the party's leadership.

Socio-economic equality is the "conviction and ideology" of the BJP, Gadkari said.

"It is not bad performance but good work that invites more enemies. The people who could not see eye to eye, who have lost (political) ground, have come together," he said referring to the opposition's attempts to cobble together a grand alliance before the Lok Sabha elections.

"Had the BJP not been strong, why would the nephew go to his aunt (Bua)?" he said, apparently referring to Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav forming an alliance with Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh.

"Whoever wants to come together against the BJP... you all come together. Even then the BJP under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi will make you bite the dust," Gadkari said.

"The BJP is not a party of mother and son, father and son or a party of any family," he added.

Gadkari alleged that the Congress succeeded in creating a wrong perception that the BJP was a communal party representing only upper castes and was inimical to Dalit interests.

"There is this theory in politics...either convince or confuse people. When you cannot convince, you start confusing," he said. "Congress and those opposed to the BJP and RSS's ideology created this misunderstanding (about the saffron party being anti-Dalit)," he added.