‘Congress’s OROP is Only Rahul Only Priyanka’: Amit Shah in Una

The BJP’s president Amit Shah coined a new definition for the abbreviation OROP to launch an attack on the Congress’ Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in Himachal Pradesh’s Una on Monday.

Amit Shah is in Una town to address a grassroots-level convention organised to brace the party’s cadres ahead of the Lok Sabha elections to be held later this year.

“For over 70 years, no one cared about the soldier. When the Narendra Modi government came to power, we introduced One Rank, One Pension (OROP). However, the Congress also follows OROP, which is Only Rahul Only Priyanka,” Amit Shah, who was received by Himachal chief minister Jai Ram Thakur at the airport in Chandigarh earlier, said.

He was referring to the One Rank, One Pension programme to equalise pension payments for retired military personnel in the country.

This is third Panna Pramukh Sammelan held ahead of the general elections in the hill state. Union home minister Rajnath addressed a Panna Pramukh Sammelan in Mandi in November last year and Union health minister Jagat Prakash Nadda presided over one in Solan last month.

Under the Panna Pramukh model, the party appoints a pramukh or prabhari who is given a list or panna, page in Hindi, with the names of 8-12 families. Each pramukh or chief is asked to focus on these families to create a larger vote base for the party.

The model was first used in Gujarat when the BJP rode to power for three successive terms. It was successfully implemented in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the party ideological mentor.

Since then, the BJP has repeatedly gone back to this model to win assembly elections in other states. It has become a tool for disseminating political messages, voter mobilisation, inter-personal contact with voters and, lastly, direct feedback from the ground.

The BJP’s top brass including, former chief ministers Shanta Kumar and Prem Kumar Dhumal and the party’s state unit chief Satpal Singh Satti were also present at the Sammelan. Its organisational secretary Ram Lal was also there.

Lok Sabha member from Hamirpur Anurag Thakur hit out at the Congress, saying that it was unnecessarily indulging in mudslinging. “Our party has given a corruption-free government to the people of India, “ he said in his address earlier.

Former chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal said the policies and programmes of the Narendra Modi-led government were being lauded the world over.

“Trump’s administration too praised the work of the Modi government,” Dhumal said.

Like Thakur, Dhumal also criticised the Congress and said that the party was a divided house in Himachal.

Former chief minister Shanta Kumar urged the cadres to ready themselves for elections.

“Elections are just like a war. All workers need to work hard for the party’s victory in Himachal,” he said.

Himachal Pradesh has four parliamentary seats of Shimla, Solan, Hamirpur and Mandi, and the Bharatiya Janata Party won all of them in the last Lok Sabha election in 2014.