Focus on women, border villages during membership drive, says PM Modi

“Our border villages are not the last villages but the first villages of our country. We should start membership drive in those first villages. When these border villages become fortresses of the BJP, they automatically become fortresses of our country,” he said.

Asking party workers not to be apprehensive about losing ground within BJP after new members join, he said, “During the kalkhand (period) of the organisation that this membership campaign will build, the women’s reservation law will come into force. So, I will include those members who will be able to make more and more women MLAs and MPs.”

In a veiled reference to the Emergency, PM said, “There was a time when Jana Sangh or BJP workers used to have one foot in rail and another in jail. The rail reference was because our workers kept travelling… About 50 years ago, our workers were doing Satyagraha in Ahmedabad. A Jana Sangh female worker spent a month in jail for Satyagraha with a nine-month-old baby in her arms.”