BJP national council meeting likely in February

The BJP is likely to hold its national council meeting in Delhi next month to plan and execute its strategy for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is likely to hold its national council meeting in Delhi next month to plan and execute its strategy for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP had experimented with announcing candidates for seats that were considered weak in the recently-concluded assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Telangana. (ANI)

According to party functionaries, the BJP, which has already begun its preparations for the General Elections, having set a target of winning more seats than the previous record of 303, is also expected to announce its first list of candidates by the end of January or early February.

“The national council meeting, which was last held in January 2019, will be attended by party leaders from the district level upward and is expected to take stock of issues that will shape the election narrative and campaign. Between 7,000 to 10,000 leaders are expected to attend the meeting,” a party functionary said, seeking anonymity.

The BJP, which is counting on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity to edge past the Opposition, is also riding high on having fulfilled two key promises that are central to its ideology – the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir.

According to party functionaries, the election narrative will also focus on the infrastructure development that took place in the last two terms of the Union government, which in turn generated jobs and gave the economy a fillip.

With Prime Minister Modi identifying four focus groups, i.e., women, youth, poor and farmers, the party is expected to come up with a plan to consolidate its hold over women and beneficiaries of its social schemes, both of whom are considered to be the key support groups of the party.

On the likelihood of the BJP announcing its candidates much ahead of the declaration of the elections, a second-party functionary said: “Preparations are already in full swing. The party has been working for the past two years in over 160 constituencies, which were identified for putting in more work. A meeting of the central election committee is also expected in January which will be followed by the announcement of seats.”

The BJP had experimented with announcing candidates for seats that were considered weak in the recently-concluded assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Telangana.

The second functionary said the party is contemplating announcing the seats for the Lok Sabha elections well ahead of time as it plans to contest more seats than it did in 2019. In the last General Elections, the BJP contested 437 seats of the total 543.

Since the party will not have to divide seats with allies in several states, such as the Akali Dal in Punjab, it is exploring the possibility of contesting seats that are either the stronghold of its former allies or the Opposition.

As it has done in the past, the BJP is also likely to give preference to younger and newer contestants. Earlier, the party had set 75 years as the cut off age for ticket distribution but now, it is thinking of tweaking the selection process to include more young people, the second functionary said.

“Winnability will be the overriding consideration, but the idea is to promote more women, candidates from communities that are backward and underrepresented and those who have not contested multiple elections...,” the second functionary said.

At present, there are over 50 MPs in the Lok Sabha who are over the age of 70.