Lucknow, May 18 : Union Home Minister and BJP’s star campaigner, Amit Shah, criticised the INDIA bloc, claiming that it is a group of family-oriented parties whose policy is to do good for their family members rather than the country.

Addressing an election rally for party candidate and Union Minister Smriti Irani on Friday, he said that after a long wait of 70 years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi performed consecration of Lord Sri Ram’s temple in Ayodhya.

“Congress people say that the consecration of Ram temple was not done properly. If these INDIA bloc people come to power, they will again put the Babri lock on the temple,” he claimed.

He noted that this ‘Ghamandiya’ (arrogant) alliance is an alliance of people with family-oriented thinking.

“Lalu Yadav wants to make his son chief minister, Mamta Banerjee wants to make her nephew the CM and Sonia Gandhi wants to make her son the prime minister,” he said.

Targeting Congress for claiming that Rae Bareli and Amethi are their family’s seats, Shah said, “These seats do not belong to any family but are the seats of the poor youth of Rae Bareli and Amethi, and the one whom the people of Rae Bareli and Amethi want will be elected to the parliament.”

He pointed that in democracy there is no family seat, the one who stays together in crisis and brings

development wins the seat.

“Today the media of the whole country is saying and it is certain that Smriti Irani in Amethi and Dinesh Pratap in Rae Bareli will win and give both the seats to Narendra Modi,” he said.

Accusing the Congress party of preserving Article 370 for 70 years, the Home Minister said that Modi has completely abolished Article 370.

“Congress is saying that they will bring back Article 370. The Prime Minister has eliminated terrorism from this country, the BJP government has eliminated terrorists by entering Pakistan through surgical and air strikes whereas Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar and his colleague Farooq Abdullah say that they do not talk about Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) because Kashmir has atom bombs,” he said.

He said that if Rahul Gandhi and Congress want to get scared, then let them be but PoK belongs to India and India will take it back.

“On one side there is Narendra Modi who was not accused of even a penny’s corruption during his tenure as CM and PM for 23 years, on other side, there is Congress-led INDIA bloc which has committed scams and corruptions worth Rs 12 lakh crore,” he claimed.

Shah said that Modi has done a lot of work for development of Uttar Pradesh, which includes 14 expressways, 12,000 km highway, Lord Sri Ram temple, Kashi Vishwanath corridor, metro rail, medical college, 60 per cent contribution in mobile manufacturing, film city, handicraft park, mega food park, logistics hub, trans Ganga city and plastic park in Gorakhpur.

He said that in 10 years, the Modi government has given Rs 18.55 lakh crore for the development of UP, whereas erstwhile Manmohan Singh’s government had given only Rs four lakh crore to UP, he claimed.

UNI