Amit Shah Leads BJP Save Democracy Padyatra in Hyderabad Against SIR Misinformation
Union Home Minister Amit Shah led the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Save Democracy Remove Anarchy padyatra in Hyderabad on Monday, 2 November, countering the opposition campaign against the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. The march, part of a nationwide BJP campaign, moved through busy central Hyderabad streets before concluding with a public meeting at Mozamjahi Market.
Mr Shah began the day at the Bhagyalakshmi Temple at Charminar, where he offered prayers and received Vedic blessings, accompanied by Union Minister G. Kishan Reddy. He then led the party’s Maha Padyatra from the statue of Dr Babu Jagjivan Ram at Basheerbagh, opposite Nizam College, from about 3 pm. The procession passed through Abids and reached Mozamjahi Market at about 6 pm, where Mr Shah addressed a gathering of party workers and supporters.
The campaign, known in Hindi as Loktantra Bachao, Arajakta Hatao, is the BJP’s response to what it describes as misinformation about the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, of electoral rolls. Party leaders say opposition claims that large numbers of genuine voters are being deleted are misleading, and that the revision is meant to clean up the rolls. The Hyderabad march was presented as an effort to take that message directly to the public, with lawyers, doctors, intellectuals and thousands of workers expected to join.
Telangana BJP leaders, including state president N. Ramchander Rao and Minister of State for Home Bandi Sanjay Kumar, took part in the programme. The presence of senior state leaders underlined the importance the party attached to the Hyderabad leg of the campaign, which is being run in several states at the same time.
On the same day, BJP president Nitin Nabin led a parallel padyatra in Kolkata, from College Street to Esplanade, as part of the same nationwide campaign. The coordinated marches in Hyderabad and Kolkata were intended to show the party’s organisation on the ground and to argue that democracy is strengthened, not weakened, by an accurate voter list. For the BJP, the padyatra format, with its direct contact with shopkeepers, students and residents along the route, remains a central way of building support and answering its critics in public.
