BJP national general secretary Bhupender Yadav.The hearing in the Ayodhya dispute had an unusual visitor in courtroom number one on Wednesday — in the audience was BJP general secretary Bhupender Yadav. Although Yadav is a lawyer himself, he has not put on his lawyer’s robes for some time now, given his political responsibilities in the party. On Wednesday, he put on the robes and witnessed the hearing. In the past, Yadav has coordinated and kept a watch on legal cases for the party leadership.
Final Overs
With the Election Commission of India (ECI) set to announce dates for the Lok Sabha polls any day now, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh was launching perhaps the last set of schemes from the ministry on Wednesday. Flanked by his two junior ministers, Singh remarked that the event looks like a “farewell” after secretaries from the ministry and the two ministers of state made their remarks.
Promotion Ideas
With national security occupying a big space in the BJP’s campaign these days, party MPs are finding novel ways to highlight to the electorate the work they have done over the last five years. Harish Dwivedi, BJP MP from Basti, in Uttar Pradesh, has built a 700-seat auditorium in his constituency — named after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, it was inaugurated on March 3. Since then, he has organised special daily screenings of the film Uri: The Surgical Strike. Just before the film gets underway, there is a 30-minute short film on Dwivedi and his activities as the Lok Sabha member from Basti. The film, made by professional filmmakers, shows Dwivedi explaining that nearly 1.75 lakh people got LPG connections and 52,000 farmers have already got money under PM-KISAN scheme.
Goodwill Gesture
After washing the feet of sanitation workers during his visit to Kumbh Mela, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has extended another goodwill gesture — he has donated Rs 21 lakh from his personal savings for the welfare of sanitation workers to the corpus fund for the welfare of Kumbh sanitation workers. Modi recently contributed Rs 1.3 crore prize money for Namami Gange programme; another Rs 3.4 crore, collected from the auction of his gifts, has also gone to the same project. BJP leaders also point out that Modi has donated Rs 21 lakh— considered an auspicious figure — from personal saving towards the education of Gujarat government staffs’ daughters.
