Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday afternoon inaugurated a three-day training camp for Madhya Pradesh BJP Ministers, MLAs, and Members of Parliament at the picturesque hill station of Pachmarhi in Narmadapuram district.
A total of 201 BJP leaders are participating in the camp, including 165 MLAs, 29 Lok Sabha members, and seven Rajya Sabha members.
Significantly, mobile phones are prohibited during the various sessions of the camp.
The camp will focus on various aspects, including the history and ideology of the Jan Sangh and BJP, as well as training in communication skills, public speaking, and digital media techniques.
The camp will also lay stress on the mental and physical well-being of the participants.
According to the camp’s schedule, participants will be engaged in various activities daily starting from 6 AM.
They will begin each day with sessions of prayers, yoga, and pranayama.
Amit Shah arrived in Bhopal by plane on Saturday afternoon. MP CM Dr Mohan Yadav and other leaders welcomed him.
From here, Shah and Dr Yadav departed for Pachmarhi by helicopter and reached there around 2.30 pm.
After inaugurating the camp, Amit Shah spoke about the history of the Jan Sangh. He briefed participants on the founding of the BJP and its journey to becoming the largest political party in the world.
MP CM Dr Yadav is scheduled to stay in Pachmarhi for the entire duration of the three-day camp.
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is scheduled to attend the closing session of the camp on 16 June.
According to MP BJP Chief V D Sharma, attendees are not allowed to carry mobile phones inside the camp during training sessions.
Sharma said that it has become common practice these days to not allow mobile phones at such events, reasoning that it helps prevent unwanted disruptions during important sessions.
The participants will be free to use mobile phones outside the training sessions.
According to sources, the training camp will also include workshops on public speaking and communication, aimed at enhancing the BJP leaders’ oratory skills and guiding them on what to say and what to avoid during public speeches and statements.
According to MP BJP media cell head Ashish Agrawal, such training camps, communication workshops, and public speaking sessions are organised regularly.
“This training camp will focus on holistic details about the BJP’s history, ideologies, and policies. The communication skills and public speaking workshop will be a part of the camp,” Agrawal said.
He said one of the aims of the camp is to teach new MLAs and leaders about the party’s policies and ideologies, and also to train them in public communication skills.
Coincidentally, the ruling BJP’s decision to hold the camp comes about a month after two ministers, a Lok Sabha Member and an MLA, made controversial statements related to ‘Operation Sindoor’—India’s retaliatory action following the terror attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir, that claimed the lives of 26 people, mostly tourists.
Madhya Pradesh Tribal Affairs Minister Vijay Shah is already facing an FIR, filed on the strict orders of the MP High Court, and has also been severely reprimanded by the Supreme Court for his speech in Mhow on 12 May, where he made derogatory remarks referring to Indian Army Colonel Sofiya Quereshi, terming her as ‘a sister of terrorists.’
State Deputy Chief Minister and Finance Minister Jagdish Devda caused further embarrassment to the ruling party when he said during speech in Jabalpur on 16 May that the Indian Armed Forces and all soldiers are ‘natmastak’ (bowing in reverence) at the feet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for delivering a befitting response to terrorists and Pakistan following the Pahalgam terror attack.
Soon after, BJP Lok Sabha Member from Mandla, Faggan Singh Kulaste, and MLA Narendra Prajapati from the Mangawan constituency in Rewa district also made irresponsible comments at separate events on 17 May.
At one event, Kulaste suffered a slip of the tongue and referred to the terrorists as “our terrorists”.
Meanwhile, Narendra Prajapati, a first-time BJP MLA from the SC-reserved Mangawan constituency in Rewa district, claimed that the ceasefire between India and Pakistan was imposed after the UN ordered India to do so.
“… PM Modi would have finished off Pakistan, had we not received orders from the UN to stop,” Prajapati said in Rewa during the BJP’s ‘Tiranga Yatra’, which was organised across the country to celebrate India’s success in ‘Operation Sindoor’ and the subsequent armed conflict with Pakistan.