Politics is science, Shah explains how

By Ajay Jha | NT

New Delhi: Home Minister Amit Shah Saturday said the BJP was headed to get a comfortable majority on its own in Uttar Pradesh while asserting that the farmers’ agitation would not impact the upcoming state assembly elections.

Shah, under whose presidency the BJP reached a new high including winning an absolute majority in the 2019 parliamentary elections, confirmed that BJP was in talks with few parties in another poll-bound state Punjab to forge a pre-poll alliance.

Notably, Shah did not talk about the proposed alliance in Punjab winning elections, as he preferred to play safe considering winning Punjab could prove Achilles’ heels for the BJP where it traditionally was a fringe player as the junior partner of the Shiromani Akali Dal. The two parties parted ways over the now withdrawn farm laws last year. “We are talking to Captain saab (Amarinder Singh) and Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa (leader of a breakaway outfit of the Shiromani Akali Dal). It is possible that we will have an alliance with both parties. We are talking to both parties with a positive mind,” Shah said while to a question at the HT Leadership Summit 2021.

Former CM Capt. Amarinder had quit the Congress and floated his own Punjab Lok Congress party last month after his removal from the post in September due to his running battle with the Congress’s state unit chief Navjot Singh Sidhu. The central leadership of the party opted to placate Sidhu, whom it considers as its future in Punjab, preferring him over the veteran leader. Amarinder was credited for pulling off a grand win for the Congress in Punjab in 2017.

Shah held four rounds of talks with Amarinder Singh before PM Narendra Modi announced the repeal of the contentious farm laws on November 19. Singh had set the withdrawal or dilution of the farm laws as a precondition for his alliance with the BJP.

Interestingly, Shah floated a new terminology at the same event in the context of UP, by asserting that the pre-poll alliance does not guarantee transfer of votes when asked about two former allies of the BJP joining hands with the SP. “Politics is not physics but chemistry. When two parties join hands, their votes will be added is not a correct assumption. When two chemicals combine, a third chemical is created,” Shah said, adding that despite the SP, BSP and the Congress coming together, BJP still managed to sweep 2019 Lok Sabha polls in UP.

Earlier, farmers maintained that they will not call off the demonstration and work to hurt the BJP in key state elections early year till other demands are met.