Setting an eye on the much awaited grand  inauguration of Ram Temple next month, the BJP has set its sights on an “overwhelming” win in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. During the two days workshop of party’s office bearers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked key organisational leaders to work towards securing over 50 per cent votes in the 2024 general elections and work in ‘mission mode’.

Addressing the BJP’s national office-bearers and State presidents on the concluding day of the two-day brainstorming meet on Saturday, Home Minister Amit Shah said the BJP’s performance should leave the Opposition “stunned”, party sources said.

The January 22 consecration ceremony at the Ram temple in Ayodhya also came up for discussion as the party is confident that it will be a major issue in its favour in the polls.

Sources said during the meeting,  top leaders discussed the party’s  preparations for the grand Ram Temple opening and how the leaders plan to carry forward a public outreach on the same. The party is all ready to launch  massive campaign based on theme Ram Temple as the party rose to power with this as well as abrogation of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir.

Sources said Modi called for raising the BJP’s vote share by 10 per cent from its show in the 2019 polls when the ruling party had fetched over 37 per cent of votes while the National Democratic Alliance led by it had bagged around 45 per cent votes. According to sources, Modi said the BJP had won 303 seats in 2019 and will win more seats in 2024 if we work on a mission mode.

“We have to reach every home with our ideology and historic works of BJP Governments and make Modi Prime Minister again in 2024 with an unprecedented majority,”  Shah later posted on X about his address at the meet.

Since coming to power at the Centre in 2014, the BJP has continuously striven to raise its vote share to 50 per cent in State Assembly polls and succeeded in this feat in many elections.  Shah, like Modi a day before, underlined the primacy of organisation in elections and said it should score such an “overwhelming” win that the Opposition thinks many times before challenging it, sources said. The Prime Minister emphasised the need to reach out to women, youth, farmers and the poor — whom he has often described as the four biggest “castes”. He also advised the party’s top brass to “express views aggressively on social media” and “give positive answers to Opposition’s negative propaganda with facts”.

He asked party leaders to connect a maximum number of these people with the ongoing ‘Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra’, which aims at saturation of his Government’s flagship welfare schemes.  The sources said the party’s top brass did not set any specific seat target but emphasised on ensuring a win which should be bigger than its 2019 performance when the BJP had bagged 303 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats.  They accused the Opposition of resorting to lies and spreading fake narratives but expressed confidence that people would reward Modi with a third straight term at the Centre.

Top party leaders, in their speeches, asked BJP functionaries to strengthen its booth committees everywhere to ensure that its local cadres reach more and more people.  The BJP’s big win in the recent Assembly polls also came up for praise in the meeting, with the party unit presidents of the three Hindi heartland states of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh speaking on the victories.

Modi’s leadership, the appeal of his Government’s welfare schemes and the strength of its organisational machinery were cited as big reasons for the win. Different ‘morchas’ of the party spoke about their upcoming programmes in the run-up to the polls.

On Friday, Modi addressed a closed-door meeting of the BJP’s national office-bearers as the party took stock of its organisational preparedness and chalked out upcoming programmes for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.  There was no official word on what Modi or Nadda said during the closed-door meeting but, sources said, the general message to the party leaders was to intensify their outreach around the government’s good works in the over three months left before the elections are announced.

The positive feedback about the ongoing Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra, a flagship Central Government programme aimed at ensuring saturation coverage of its numerous welfare schemes, was also talked about at the Friday meeting.  The BJP has asked its members to ensure that people in maximum numbers benefit from it.

The poll results, especially the BJP’s sweep of the three Hindi-speaking states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, have boosted the party’s morale as it looks to retain power at the Centre for a third straight term.