AMIT SHAH BLOWS BUGLE FOR 2019
BJP president Amit Shah blew the bugle for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, setting a target of 350-plus parliamentary seats. ››
NEW DELHI: BJP president Amit Shah on Thursday blew the bugle for 2019 Lok Sabha election, setting a target of winning over 350 parliamentary seats.
In the run up to the elections, Shah will soon appoint palaks (mentors) for the 120 Lok Sabha seats where the BJP has never won in the past. Most of them are in southern and north-eastern India.
Their job will be to oversee the BJP’s preparedness and identify suitable candidates in these constituencies.
Senior ministers of the Modi government will also be given the task of supervising five or six such Lok Sabha seats and convert them into BJP seats.
While law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will take charge of Assam, health minister JP Nadda and petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan will oversee West Bengal and Kerala, respectively.
Prabharis (in-charge) will be appointed for the 261 Lok Sabha seats where the party lost in 2014 elections.
These prabharis will be party leaders from outside those constituencies. The BJP had won 282 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 elections.
Shah briefed a select group of BJP leaders — including nine Union ministers — at the party headquarters about his blueprint for 2019, which turns focus on states such as West Bengal, Odisha, Kerala and the northeast. A 10-minute presentation on Shah’s efforts to galvanize the party, BJP’s current situation and its prospects in the polls was made to the BJP leaders at the meeting.
The BJP had won all the Lok Sabha seats from Rajasthan and Gujarat last time, and is near its peak in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand. Soures told HT that Shah told party leaders to look for greener pastures to compensate any loss in these areas.
The BJP has high hopes from Odisha, where it could win just one of the 21 Lok Sabha seats, and West Bengal, which accounts for 42 parliamentary segments, of which two are with the BJP.
Shah told BJP leaders that Modi’s personal popularity has grown over the last three years, but the party cannot afford any laxity. He asked the party leaders to ensure anti-incumbency does not set in, and suggested that the organisation work closely with the local bodies to address grievance at the lowest level. “All surveys show BJP winning more than 300 seats if elections were held today,” said a BJP leader who attended the meeting.