The Bharatiya Janata Party continued its focus on the 144 seats that it lost in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, with its leadership holding meetings with key party leaders on Tuesday to chalk out strategies to win them. This is the second time in a month that the party is deliberating over these seats.
In a meeting held with some of the newly-appointed state in-charges, party president J P Nadda and general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh deliberated on ways to win the 144 seats. Present at this meeting were union ministers Dharmendra Pradhan and G Kishan Reddy, apart from party general secretaries Arun Singh, Vinod Tawde and Sunil Bansal, as well as Manipur in-charge Sambhit Patra. Sources said that discussions were held on booth-level preparations of the party in these seats.
“Booth strategy was discussed, and the idea is that the BJP has to win. There is now ample time for us to fix what is not going right for us in these seats,” said a union minister, on conditions of anonymity.
Earlier in the first week of September, in another such series of meetings, a survey of these 144 seats revealed that it was in a tough spot in 45-50 per cent of these seats, with many of them from the South Indian states, and some from Bihar and Maharashtra. In the previous meeting, held on September 6, some of these leaders were given responsibilities of some of these 144 seats.
As key states, including Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and later Karnataka, are headed to the polls, the party’s top brass on Tuesday held a series of meetings – one with state in-charges, especially of the newly appointed ones, and another with party general secretaries. These meetings, where Nadda and Santhosh were present, were to take stock of the situation and to deliberate over strategies.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the party managed to win 303 seats – the highest seats won by a political party since the Congress won 404 seats in 1984. The BJP also bagged 37.6 per cent vote share, which, too, was the highest since the 1989 elections.
Newly-appointed state in-charges were also asked to take care of their respective states, and they were asked to go and familiarise themselves with the people as well as the political situation in their states. Sources said that the party will also hold meetings with state sangathan mantris (general secretary organisation) as well as heads of its various wings and morchas in the coming days.