With an eye on the upcoming Assembly polls and lok Sabha elections in 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Sunday addressed all 13 BJP Chief Ministers and asked them to focus on the agenda of “good governance, development and performance”.
Attended by the party chief Amit Shah and top Union Ministers, the meeting is seen as an attempt to ensure that the Modi-Government’s agenda dominates public discourse and trumps Opposition parties’ attack on his Government over a host of issues.
The meeting assumes significance in the run up to upcoming Assembly polls, including that in Gujarat, and lok Sabha polls in 2019. The party does not seek to rest on its laurels which it won in UP, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur polls and would rather like to look ahead in future, consolidating its political expansion.
The Prime Minister asked Chief Ministers to focus on development with a special emphasis on the poor sections of society. Improvement of governance and performance was also stressed by the Prime Minister.
A similar meeting was held last year, an exercise started by Shah to ensure that all party-run Governments follow a common agenda and focus on implementation of Central schemes.
Modi also understood to have told the meeting that there should be no laxity in implementing Central schemes launched for the well being of poor.
In the National Executive meeting at Bhubaneshwar, Modi sought party workers and leaders not to be complacent after poll victories and rather set their eyes on taking “a long jump” in history and “march with speed” and “change history”.
Modi focused on developing ‘Jan Dhan’ (bank accounts, wealth for poor), ‘Van Dhan’ (tribals, forests, environment etc), ‘Jal Dhan’ (irrigation, drinking water, water recharge, use of sea water) for all encompassing development of the country.
Besides the 13 Chief Ministers, the most the saffron party has ever had, five deputy chief ministers, Union Mministers like Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Sushma Swaraj and M Venkaiah Naidu attended the meeting.