Ahead of elections in five States of Karnataka, Tripura, Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday held a dinner meeting with party general secretaries to discuss the political situation and strategy to be adopted by the party for the ensuing Assembly polls .
According to sources, the Prime Minister sought all the general secretaries to sharply focus on galvanising the cadres for the coming Assembly polls and increase party support from the younger generation, particularly those who would be eligible for voting in 2018.
The dinner meeting, with BJP chief Amit Shah in attendance, provided an opportunity to party leaders to pick up the threads from Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh poll campaigns and streamline strategies for the polls in Karnataka and North-Eastern States with the former offering BJP an opportunity to unseat the Congress-led Siddaramaiah Government.
Tripura is another State where BJP is hoping that it may create history by deposing the Manik Sarkar-headed Left-front Government which is ruling the State for two-decades.
The Lok Sabha polls, which are less than one-and-half years away, also generally figured during the interactions with general secretaries who also happen to be States-in-charge, sources said. BJP has already set itself on for general elections with around 4 lakh “Vistaraks” deployed across the States.
The leaders who attended the dinner-meet included Kailash Vijayvargiya, Bhupender Singh, Ram Lal, Arun Singh, Ram Madhav, Saudan Singh and Anil Jain . A total of eight general secretaries were present at the dinner that lasted two hours, according to sources.
The high-level interaction has come close on the heels of indications that there may be some changes in the party. The reshuffling in the party is long overdue, according to a section in the party while others in the BJP feel that the party was “in any way winning all the elections”.
Earlier during the day, Shah attended the core group of Karnataka to review party’s campaign in the State which witnessed heated exchanges between the Karnataka Chief Minister and the BJP chief this week. The meeting was attended by BJP’s Karnataka-in-charge Murlidhar Rao.
Besides the five States others like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are scheduled to go to polls during the latter half of the year.