Nagpur: Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Sunday said that for a political leader, the party should be like his family and he should consider the party workers as his family members.
Gadkari was addressing a gathering after laying the foundation stone for the BJP’s new office in Maharashtra’s Nagpur city.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and BJP state chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule were also present in the programme.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is also celebrating its foundation day on Sunday.
The BJP was founded on April 6, 1980 by leaders of the erstwhile Bharatiya Jana Sangh, a party which had merged with other opposition parties to form the Janata Party to take on the Congress in the post-Emergency 1977 polls.
The BJP won only two Lok Sabha seats in the first national election it fought in 1984. However, it rose rapidly later under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani, coming to power in the 90s as the head of a coalition, before Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the party to its maiden majority in 2014.
The party has been in power at the Centre since then.
Gadkari said, “For a leader, his party should be like his family and the party workers like family members. You should love the party workers like you love your children.”
He said leaders like him and Fadnavis got the opportunity to become what they are today because of the dedication and sacrifice of innumerable party workers from the beginning.
There was an adverse time when the Congress tried to propagate a wrong image of the Jana Sangh, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and RSS in the society, Gadkari said.
“But, we overcame that spread of misinformation about us. Ours is not a casteist or a communal party,” he said.
Gadkari further said no one is big because of his caste, and added that “being a BJP worker is our caste (identity)”.
The BJP’s objective is the overall development of the nation, he said.
“Nation comes first and above everything for us,” said the Lok Sabha member from Nagpur.
Gadkari personally contributed Rs 25 lakh for the construction of the new BJP office here.
