New Delhi, March 5 : on Home Minister and former BJP president Amit Shah on Saturday said his party will return to power in four of the five poll-bound states, and improve its situation in Punjab, during his media address on the last day of campaigning for the Uttar Pradesh polls. As nearly a month-long poll process come to an end with the seventh phase of voting scheduled to be held in Uttar Pradesh on March 7, Shah said for the first time since independence, democracy has “percolated” to the ground level in the state and people are rooting for development and not voting for caste and dynastic rules. “BJP’s campaign has been given a positive response by people in all five states. We will come back to power in four states (UP, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur), and improve our situation significantly in Punjab,” Shah said. “We are seeing democracy percolate to the ground level for the first time in UP since 1947, free from casteism, dynasticism, and appeasements,” he said. He said in UP, the Yogi Adityanath government has fulfilled 96.2 per cent of its promises. He also said the huge crowd at PM’s road show in Varanasi showed the support towards BJP, and predicted its victory in the polls. He also talked about government programs, including free food grains given to the BPL citizens since the Covid-19 pandemic started, and said government programs have reached people without any caste or religion based discrimination. Asked about Punjab, where Shah said the party would improve its performance, he said it does not mean the BJP alliance cannot win the election. BJP president JP Nadda said they had been advised to quit the Shiromani Akali Dal alliance long back, and said BJP was forced to be the j or alliance partner for long. “Since the time of Jan Sangh, for the first time we are fighting for 65 plus seats on our symbol. Earlier, we were limited to 23 seats and we were fulfilling the ‘gathbandhan dharm’. We were told we should fight polls without alliance, PM Modi said we will not abandon our allies,” Nadda said. “Our growth in Punjab was hampered but we did not leave our alliance partners. They quit the alliance. “We have got the opport ty for the first time,” he said. Results for elections in UP, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa will be announced on March 10. AO ING