Amit Shah meets almost 1000 party workers in 4 hour long meeting

As party workers jostled to meet BJP President Amit Shah, a group of twenty farmers were huddled in the back rows patiently waiting for their turn. Disillusioned with the party for which they had “toiled” for over decades, the group had come with a list of woes. 

Just 23 kms away from the Capital, the men, all belonging to the Tyagi community from ten villages in and around Mandola, complained that farmers have been kept in the dark about the land acquisition bill, that the party MP VK Singh had “forgotten” his constituency and that they suffered loss because of untimely rains.

“We have heard that the government has brought about nine amendments to the land acquisition bill. But we dont know what it is about. No one comes to tell or hear us. We want to tell the party president to explain about the land bill to farmers,” said Bagesh Tyagi, who claims he has been working for the BJP for 40 years. He said Shah had assured them the party would address their concerns. 

It was the first day of Shah’s durbar with party workers and he spent around four hours on Monday afternoon meeting around 1000 of them, sources said. Shah has decided that he would connect with party workers on the first and third Mondays every month and they could meet him without any appointment. 

Hundreds gathered at the party headquarters at Ashok Road to meet Shah, who sat at a table along with other party leaders including Bhupendra Yadav and Vinay Sahasrabuddhe. “Hum tho kursi sarkane wale hain,” said one of them referring to their work for party leaders at functions as he waited to meet Shah. 

A man in a dhoti, kurta and gamcha waited with a small plate with ganga jal and prasad for the party president. “I want to ask him to sprinkle Gangal jal in the country,” said Shravan Kumar Dikshit of Sri Ganga Arti Seva Samiti.  Dikshit, who had come all the way from Kanpur said he had himself travelled on scooter to sprinkle Ganga jal. 

Several others came with flowers for Shah. While some refused to disclose the issue they wanted to take up with their party president, some said they had come to discuss some personal matter.

Shubhalata Malik, who was a member of one of the BJP’s erstwhile cells, said she wanted to ask Shah to expedite the process of reorganising the cells so that the workers would have responsibilities allocated to them. Shah, who had dissolved all the 150 odd cells, was expected to snip the number to 15-20. 

Sanjay Mani, a district coordinator of the mahadalit manch in Baka in Bihar, demanded that he be made a member of the Rashtriya Safai Karamchari Sahyog. “I want to work against manual scavenging. Each member is given charge of a few states and I would work in states like Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha,” he said.

Narendra Yadav, who stood in the crowd near Shah’s table, said he was an active party member from Madhya Pradesh. “It is foundation day. I want to work for the party in Bihar where elections are going to be held this year,” he said.