PM Narendra Modi unhappy with BJP spokespersons

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has directed BJP spokespersons and television panelists to focus more on effectively highlighting the economic achievements of the NDA government, like Jan Dhan Yojana, crop insurance and pension schemes, rather than fall into the “trap” of the party’s political opponents who drag them into issues like rise in intolerance and communal polarisation that show the saffron party as being anti-minority and anti-Dalit.

Sources said Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah are unhappy with the performance of spokespersons and TV panelists as they fail to draw attention to the various achievements of the NDA government in the last 19 months, especially the schemes and plans that help the farmers, rural folk, the economically weak as well as women and the senior citizens.

“In debates on news channels the BJP spokespersons and panelists end up getting attacked not only by the Congress and other opposition parties but also the ‘experts’ participating in the discussion. Instead of selling the accomplishments of the Modi government, they end up getting into a fight over how the government is not anti-Muslim or anti-Dalit,” a senior BJP leader told ET.

BJP ministers and party leaders maintain since there has been no scam in the NDA government — unlike in UPA-II regime — the Opposition is targeting it on the issue of communalism and discrimination against Dalits.

A spate of incidents — from the lynching of Akhlaq in Dadri, mass reconversion in Agra and the Rohith Vemula suicide case in Hyderabad — have given enough fodder to the opposition to slam the BJP and the NDA government for either being complicit, or insensitive, or not taking adequate measures to check them.