The BJP is all set to kickstart its aggressive expansion plans in Odisha with a meeting of its national executive in the State capital Bhubaneswar with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, all top Union Ministers and Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled States addressing various sessions on April 15 and 16.

Special posters, banners and a theme song have been unveiled in Bhubaneswar to welcome the PM and other delegates for the meeting, which will be held in an 80,000-square feet area, from where the PMO and the State Chief Ministers will be operating for two days.

Forty Union Ministers will be attending the meeting along with BJP President Amit Shah, for whom a separate office and a lounge has been created by the State unit.

Besides the political and economic resolutions that are routinely passed in the national executive meeting, Chief Ministers of the BJP-ruled States will give individual reports about their people-centric plans and policies. The State BJP has already been organising public meetings in all the 21 Lok Sabha constituencies of the State.

The BJP has big hopes in Odisha, where it has virtually replaced the Congress as the principal Opposition party. In the recently held Panchayat polls in the State, the BJP came second, securing 294 of the total 851 zila parishad seats, a massive increase from its tally of 36 seats in the 2012 local-body polls.

While the ruling Biju Janata Dal was still at the top, winning 467 seats, it ceded considerable ground to the BJP. The Congress was pushed to the third position with just 60 seats.

The BJP had polled a vote percentage of 21.88 per cent in Odisha in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, although it managed to win only one seat. The BJD secured 20 of the total 21 seats with a 44.77 per cent vote share and the Congress failed to win a single seat, although it had a vote share of 26.38 per cent.

Since then, the BJP has been following an aggressive political campaign in the State, finally emerging as a viable alternative to the BJD in the panchayat polls.