 "Union Home Minister Amit Shah")
Union Home Minister Amit Shah is scheduled to visit Patna to attend a farmers' conclave organised by the Bihar BJP on February 22, the birth anniversary of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, who was an ascetic and a peasant leader.
At a joint press conference, state BJP president Sanjay Jaiswal and Rajya Sabha MP Vivek Thakur said that Shah will attend the farmers' convention next month.
Jaiswal also denied speculations that Swami Sahajanand Saraswati's birth anniversary was being celebrated as a strategy to consolidate the party's upper-caste support base.
"Swami Sahajanand Saraswati's contributions have been acknowledged by historians around the world. Please do not view him through a narrow prism," said Jaiswal.
The BJP leaders also termed Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as anti-farmer, referring to the violence on January 11 in Buxar, where a peasants' agitation over compensation demand for acquired land for a thermal power project turned violent.
When the CM recently visited Buxar during his 'Samadhan Yatra', he did not even bother to meet the affected farmers, they alleged.
It is because of the lacklustre attitude of the state government that Saraswati is a less-known personality in Bihar. It must hand over the defunct Bihta Bazar Samiti and its land to the central government so that it can be developed into an advanced farmers' facilitation centre to be named after Sahajanand Saraswati," said Thakur.
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