Advani, who is a member of parliament from the Gandhinagar constituency which covers a part of Ahmedabad, also visited ailing Gujarat assembly speaker Ashok Bhatt and the family of Amit Shah.
Prominent Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani visited former Gujarat minister of state for home Amit Shah in Sabarmati jail in Ahemdabad on Saturday.
Shah has been in custody and jail in connection with the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case since July 25.
Advani, who is a member of parliament from the Gandhinagar constituency which covers a part of Ahmedabad, also visited ailing Gujarat assembly speaker Ashok Bhatt and the family of Amit Shah.
Later, Advani blasted the central government for using the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to defame the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat. “The public will give a fitting reply to the Congress, which we witnessed in Kathlal,” he said.
Advani was referring to BJP’s victory in an assembly by-election at Kathlal, where the Congress has lost for the first time since 1947.
“The victory is extraordinary. It was the bastion of the Congress for years and it is a certificate that the people are happy with the BJP, which is why we won with a huge margin of 21,000 votes against our own expectation of 5,000 votes,” Advani said.
Advani is the second BJP leader to meet Shah in jail, the first being Arun Jaitley, who met Shah on September 11. The visits send out the message that the BJP has not abandoned Shah, who at one time was considered as the right-hand man of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.
The CBI has claimed that Shah was the kingpin behind the conspiracy to exterminate Sohrabuddin Shaikh, his wife, Kausar Bi, and Tulsi Prajapati, a witness to Sohrabuddin’s death. The Gujarat police claim that Sohrabuddin was a terrorist and killed in an encounter, which the CBI says was faked. The CBI says Sohrabuddin was extortionist who was bumped off. The BJP insists that Shah is innocent and has been framed by the CBI at the behest of the central government.
Incidentally, Shah’s assembly constituency Sarkhej, comes within Advani’s parliamentary constituency of Gandhinagar.
Later, speaking about the Ayodhya verdict due on September 24, Advani urged the BJP leaders and workers to be patient. “I had started my nationwide rally from Somnath on September 25, 1990, and thereafter, I visit Somnath every year on Septmber 25. This year too I will visit Somnath and will declare what I want to say on that day,” he said.
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