Exactly 38 years ago, on 6 April 1980, Bharatiya Janata Party was founded with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the first party president. The foundation of the party goes back to the 1950s when Shyama Prasad Mukherjee founded the Jana Sangh. Starting with a 10 member Jana Sangh, the BJP is the largest party today with 11 crore members.
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In the 1984 Loksabha elections, BJP which started with just 2 MPs in the Lok Sabha today has 272+ members. More importantly, the party is in power in 22 states of India. The journey from just 10 members to 11 crore members…From 2 seats to 273 seats… From non-significant to the largest power has been a long and tough journey.
Generations after generations have sacrificed everything , at times even their lives, to take the party to this height. Boycotted, insulted, beaten, assaulted, co-workers murdered, the workers have never compromised with the ideologies and principles.
The leadership of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, Kushabhau Thackeray, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lalkrishna Advani, Pramod Mahajan, Murli Manohar Joshi have taken the party to new heights with every passing year. If there was a duo which built the party brick by brick in the era when there was no internet, mobile, social outreach, it was the duo of Atal Ji – Advani Ji.
In the current post-Vajpayee era, it has been the duo of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah who have taken us to the zenith. Their determination, hard work, vision, integrity and work has helped BJP form government in states where we couldn’t even think to win a single seat a few years ago.
On this foundation day, let us remember all the leaders, every Karyakarta and member who sacrificed everything selflessly, humiliated, were assaulted, wrongly put behind the bars, or even murdered by those who couldn’t stand the resurging party and its ideology. The principles and ideologies run deep in our blood and there won’t be any compromise as far as Nation is concerned. We will continue to grow in strength.
As Atal Ji had said,
“अंधेरा छटेगा, कमल खिलेगा ।” The lotus will continue to bloom in its full glory.
#BJP_Foundation_Day.
[Text content Credit: Kshitij Mohan Singh ]