An upbeat BJP will discuss its ‘Mission 2019’ at a two-day strategy session of the party’s national executive in Odisha over the weekend, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah, all top Cabinet Ministers and Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled States participating in the event.

Capital city Bhubaneswar is ready for the event with the Prime Minister’s posters and banners dotting the skyline. Shah, who reached Bhubaneswar on Friday afternoon, is leading the strategy session with a plan to expand in uncharted territories, including Odisha, where the BJP currently has only one of the 21 MPs, but made great leaps in the recently held local body polls. Along with Odisha, the BJP’s next targets are West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

The holding of BJP’s national executive in Bhubaneswar is symbolic and critical in this strategy. The BJP’s last national executive was held in Kozhikode in Kerala, and Bhubaneswar represents its next line of attack. The venue in Bhubaneswar accordingly caters to the local sentiments and populist plans the BJP is set to unfold. The venue for the meeting is thus named after Ddalit poet Bhima Bhoi apparently to woo Dalits who comprise over 17 per cent of Odisha’s population.

“The national executive meeting venue has been named after revolutionary poet Bhima Bhoi. The saint poet had a unique ideology, which is being followed by crores of people in Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand,” Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said inaugurating the media centre set up for the meeting.

Of the 147 Assembly segments in Odisha, 23 seats are reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates, while three of the 21 Lok Sabha seats are allotted to the Dalit community.

The BJP had won only two SC seats in the Assembly and none of the three LS seats allotted to the community. The party now focusses on Dalit votes, which traditionally belonged to the Congress, but has now slipped into hands of the Biju Janata Dal. The Dalit population in the State is 71,48,463 according to the 2011 census. Shah started his three-day tour of Odisha by garlanding the statue of B R Ambedkar at AG Chhak near the State Secretariat. Earlier in the morning, RSS members had also garlanded the statue on the occasion of his 126th birth anniversary.