Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sakshi Maharaj has said the upcoming Lok Sabha elections are being fought in the name of the country and there will be “no election after that”, reports said. A video of him making a speech at an event in his constituency Unnao, in Uttar Pradesh, emerged on Friday.

“Our leader [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi is a global leader,” he said. “People are saying that Modi hai to desh hai [the country is because Modi is]. These elections will be for the country. For the first time, there is an awakening in the country.”

He added: “I am an ascetic. There will be no election after that. It’s just these elections, and they will be fought in the name of the country. I think the results will be better than before.”

“Before the General Elections in 2014, there was a Modi wave, but this time there is a tsunami called Modi,” Sakshi Maharaj said.

Sakshi Maharaj in 2017 was warned by the Election Commission for making inflammatory remarks about the population, and has made several other controversial remarks in the past. In January 2017, the Unnao MP had said “people with four wives and 40 children are responsible for population explosion in the country”. In November, he had called for the demolition of Delhi’s Jama Masjid, suggesting that it was constructed on the site of a temple. Soon after religious leader Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was convicted of rape in August 2017, leading to massive protests in the north, Maharaj had claimed that “crores of people are supporting Ram Rahim, and only one person is complaining against him”. “Is one person right or are crores of people right?” he had asked.