The BJP is ready to launch an all-out war against the Congress ahead of the lok Sabha polls by planning a whirlwind tour of its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi across the country and settling issues like pre-poll alliance and homecoming of some powerful former leaders.
Entire top leadership of the party, including its Chief Ministers, will give final shape to party’s campaign strategy that will finalise Modi’s hurricane tour across the country. Members of BJP Parliamentary Board will also attend the CMs’ conference and chances are that they will take the final call on the homecoming of former Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa. The idea to have an alliance with the TDP in Andhra Pradesh and the INlD in Haryana will also be discussed threadbare at this meeting in the morning.
In a separate meeting of the Central Election Campaign Committee later in the day, leaders will take stock of progress made by different sub-committees who have been assigned specific tasks. Focus will be on PM-candidate Narendra Modi’s forthcoming rallies, which will grow in numbers from the next month. The BJP is expected to come out with its first list of roughly 100 lok Sabha candidates in the second half of January. This will also include the name of some veteran leaders of the party.
The issue of BSY’s return to the BJP has been negotiated for a couple of months and the party seems ready to embrace its former stalwart. Aam Aadmi Party’s electoral debut in the national Capital on anti-corruption planks had cast shadows on this issue, but the party had decided to look at the ground realities.
“Half of the cases against him have been quashed. Today, there is no conviction against him. Anyways, he does not want to contest election and work as an ordinary worker of the party,” a senior BJP leader said. Similarly, the BJP and the TDP have inched closer in recent times and there has been an admission in both the camps that they need to have an alliance, which could provide the much-needed political “ oxygen” to N Chandrababu Naidu and might help Narendra Modi to make inroads in another Southern State.
TDP had a vote share of about 25 per cent in the 2009 and the BJP hopes to ride the Modi wave this time to repeat its 1999 performance when it got 7 lok Sabha seats in the State. Naidu is tipped to get the post of NDA Convener after he join hands. However, alliance with INDl is a tricky issue for the BJP, which is already into an electoral pact with the Haryana Janhit Congress and has projected its chief Kuldeep Bishnoi as the joint CM candidate.
“Even when the Congress swept Haryana, winning all 10 seats, Chautalas remained a force with over 15 per cent votes. We are testing waters for a non-Jat politics with Bishnoi, but there is a demand to revisit the issue,” a senior leader said. However, party seniors feel the case of Chautalas, who have been convicted, was different from BSY’s.
Meanwhile, the party wants to capitalise on the “huge response” that its PM candidate’s rallies is getting. “From next month, Modi will hold more than one rally a week. The number of rallies every week would go up in February. By the time we are closer to election, Modi would have addressed nearly 200 rallies, mostly big,” a senior BJP leader said.
As election campaign would progress, Modi will hold joint rallies and meeting with NDA leaders in different parts of the country. Party president, state in-charges and other senior leaders will also attend the meeting of the Election Campaign Committee, which will chalk out future programmes. The different sub-committees will also make a presentation of the progress they have made in the task assigned to them.