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Union Home Minister Amit Shah told Uttar Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and workers in Varanasi on Friday that they must focus on polling booths if they want the party to win the coming assembly polls.
“Booth jeeta to UP jeeta (win the booth and you will win UP),” he said, according to BJP's state president Swatantra Dev Singh who briefed reporters on the meeting which is being seen as an indication that Shah will be actively involved in the ruling party's campaign to return to power in the state.
The party will win the upcoming state assembly polls on the strength of the workers and they will ensure the win for the party, Singh quoted Shah as telling the meeting, convened to discuss the poll strategy for the upcoming elections.
The strategy session was attended by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Union minister and BJP's UP affairs in-charge Dharmendra Pradhan, deputy CM Dinesh Sharma and party state president Singh, besides the leaders in charge of all 403 assembly segments.
In the crucial meeting, former BJP president Shah also emphasised the need of improving public relation and making more and more people party members under the party's membership expansion campaign, said Singh.
Decisions were also taken on the proposals for encouraging people from other parties to join the BJP on a large scale, said Singh, adding these, among others, were the strategy given to assembly in-charges, district presidents and state's regional leaders for winning 300-plus seats in the 2022 polls.
Singh said Shah also pointed out to workers and party leaders that "those who used to raise questions on the Ram temple saying mandir wahin banayenge, par taarikh nahin batayenge (will build the temple there but won't tell you when) have been aptly answered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi."
Prime Minister Modi has already laid the foundation stone for the construction of a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya and also made Kashi Vishwanath corridor, Singh quoted Shah as telling the party workers.
Shah reached the prime minister's parliamentary constituency Varanasi on Friday on a two-day visit to a warm welcome.
Before chairing the meeting, Shah reached Lanka crossing and garlanded the statue of Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya and later reached hastkala sankul (trade facilitation centre for handicrafts) to participate in the meeting.
"Today reviewed the preparations for the UP assembly polls with assembly in-charges in Varanasi," Shah later said in a tweet.
Singh said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath have given fearless and corruption-free governance in the country and the state.
It is Shah's second visit to the state within a fortnight.
Earlier, on October 29, he had launched a BJP membership drive in the state capital and made it clear that Adityanath would be the party's chief ministerial face in the elections.