Shah performs ‘shodashopachara’ puja at temple in UP

On Wednesday, 4th July 2018, BJP president Amit Shah performed a 30-minute puja at the Vindhvasini Devi temple in Vindhyachal. His subsequent political discussions suggested that he may have been seeking divine intervention against any Opposition unity.

Grassroots workers were asked by Shah about the possible impact of an alliance between the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, and was told it could prove disastrous for the BJP in the upcoming general election.

Shah had performed a shodashopachara puja, meant to seek victory in any area of life informed a priest at the temple, located in the eastern Uttar Pradesh district of Mirzapur to the press.

Common devotees were restricted to enter the temple at 10am, some 90 minutes before Shah arrived with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. They left after an hour, around 12.30pm.

An initial announcement was made that ordinary devotees would be allowed in only after 1.30pm. But when the local pandas and pilgrims began chanting slogans against the government and police, it reopened half an hour early.

Later he met the 82 party vistaraks – leaders of the door-to-door campaign teams – of eastern Uttar Pradesh. He was advised to spare no effort in scrambling the growing friendship between the Samajwadis and Mayawati, who have declared that an alliance is a definite possibility.

A senior BJP politician said on the condition of anonymity that “An Opposition alliance will make things difficult for us in most of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats, according to the vistaraks.”

In the 2014 general election the BJP secured 42.6 per cent of the votes from the stateand 41.6 per cent in last year’s Assembly polls, the Samajwadis and the BSP polled a combined 42.2 per cent in 2014 and 50.7 per cent in 2017.

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On Thursday, 5th July 2018, Shah is going to meet the party’s remaining 93 vistaraks, from western Uttar Pradesh.

Shah met 35 MPs and MLAs of the party and told them the general election would see a tough fight and they should therefore spend as much time as they could in their constituencies on Wednesday.

A news conference in Mirzapur to thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi for “increasing the minimum support price for kharif crops by up to 50 per cent,” was held by him. Then he addressed over 1,000 volunteers of the party IT cell in Varanasi.

IT cell had told the leadership in April that the number of adverse comments on their posts was increasing every month informed the sources.

A member of the IT cell in Lucknow told press “In 2014 and 2017, we used to receive more comments supporting us than criticizing us. But the number of critics is growing.”

“This means our supporters have stopped taking an interest in our posts and are busy with other things. They may be the same voters who failed to turn up at the booths in Phulpur, Gorakhpur, Kairana and Noorpur.”

In March to BSP-supported Samajwadi candidates, BJP lost the Phulpur and Gorakhpur parliamentary by-elections. It lost the May by-elections to the Kairana (Lok Sabha) and Noorpur (Assembly) seats, where the Samajwadis, BSP, Congress and the Rashtriya Lok Dal had joined forces.

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