Bracing up for 2019 lok Sabha polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah here on Monday took stock of the party’s political strategy and Governance in 19 BJP and NDA-ruled States along with plans to achieve targets for ‘New India’ by 2022.
The top leadership also discussed ways to “double” the income of farmers.
The progress of the implementation of the development and social welfare schemes and specific models in the respective States were discussed with presentations given before the Prime Minister and the BJP chief. Innovative development initiatives by the BJP-run States and transfer of their benefits to poor figured in the deliberations with detailed queries made by the Prime Minister, according to sources.
The ground report on the status of implementations of all the Central schemes was taken into account of by the meeting which lasted over three-hours.
The Chief Ministers and Deputy Chief Ministers gave account of their preparations for the lok Sabha polls which are less than two years away and also of their readiness for assembly polls.
Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh are to go to polls by this year end while in 2018 elections are due in Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Rajasthan and Tripura.
After the meeting the UP CM Yogi Adityanath said Prime Minister and BJP president did ‘margdarshan’ in the meeting which formulated plans to “double” income of farmers. He said Congress had always worked against “the backward communities”.
The brain storming takes place close to Shah engaging in a detailed confabulations with senior Central Ministers and party General Secretaries on August 17 to plan out win in ‘maximum’ lok Sabha seats with an optimist target of over 350. This meeting had a focus on scoring victory in around 120 constituencies which the BJP had lost during previous general elections.
Besides Prime Minister and party President, twenty other top BJP leaders mainly Chief Ministers and Deputy Chief Ministers attended the brain storming session at the party headquarters. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and General Secretary (organization) Ram lal were also present during the discussion.
Thirteen incumbent BJP Chief Ministers attending the meeting were - Pema Khandu in Arunachal Pradesh, Sarbananda Sonowal in Assam, Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh, Manohar Parrikar in Goa, Vijay Rupani in Gujarat, Manohar lal Khattar in Haryana, Raghubar Das in Jharkhand, Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh, Devendra Fadnavis in Maharashtra, N. Biren Singh in Manipur, Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan, Trivendra Singh Rawat in Uttarakhand, and Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh.
The BJP is in power in 13 States and is an ally in the ruling dispensation in six other States.
The deputy Chief Ministers present were Chowna Meain (Arunachal Pradesh), Nitinbhai Patel (Gujarat), Nirmal Singh (J&K ), Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma (UP) and Sushil Modi (Bihar).
The CMs and Deputy-CMS meeting with Prime Minister and Shah-led Central Ministers discussions, last week, with BJP General Secretaries comes close to the expected reshuffle in the cabinet, this month, which may see “changes” with an eye on the lok Saba polls.
This is the third meeting of the Prime Minister with BJP CMs since he assumed power at the Centre on May 26, 2014.