National executive of the BJP will be held here on September 24-25 before the politically crucial Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls slated before December where nearly 2,000 BJP leaders, including party MPs and MlAs, would attend the meet.
The meeting, to be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, would also mark the conclusion of the birth centenary celebrations of BJP’s ideologue Deendayal Upadhaya. A special resolution on the centenary celebrations may be moved on this occasion as the curtails wrung down on the event.
Elections in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and also in Karnataka would come for discussion in the meeting.
In the run up to the Assembly polls in three States, Shah last month appointed Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley as in-charge of the Gujarat Assembly elections while allotting the responsibility of Karnataka to HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar and that of Himachal Pradesh to Minister for Social Justice Thawar Chand Gehlot.
In Gujarat Jaitley is to be assisted by three other Central Ministers — Panchayat, Rural Development and Sanitation Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, Minister of State for the Development of North Eastern Region, (Prime Minister Office) Jitendra Singh and Minister of State for law And Justice PP Choudhary. Javedkar, the election-in-charge of Karnataka, will be backed by Power Minister Piyush Goyal.
The Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh State Assemblies are to go to polls later this year. Elections in Karnataka are to be held in 2018 as its term ends on May 28, next year. The term of the Gujarat Assembly comes to an end on January 22, 2018. Himachal Pradesh Assembly tenure comes to an end on January 7, 2018.
BJP is confident of winning Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh and trusts that it would fight out Congress in Karnataka on an even keel and even gain advantage of anti-incumbency against the ruling dispensation to form its Government there. Karnataka has been the first Southern post that was won by the BJP from the Congress in 2008.
A meeting of the office-bearers of the party will be held a day before the national executive meeting.
The executive meet was earlier scheduled in Visakhapatnam in August but was postponed due to the Monsoon Session of Parliament, the presidential and vice-presidential polls.
The two-day executive will be dedicated to Swami Vivekananda’s Chicago speech as the historic event’s 125th year fell on September 11. Modi had addressed youth convention here at ‘Vigyan Bhawan’ on September 11.