Thousands of workers are expected to gather at the BJP’s headquarters in New Delhi.
New Delhi:
The BJP Headquarters in New Delhi is all set to see a flurry of activity on Wednesday evening, with thousands of party workers gathering to accord a grand welcome to Prime Minister Narendra Modi following the successful G20 Summit.
The Prime Minister will get down to electoral business right after and take part in the BJP’s Central Election Committee meeting to decide on candidates for the crucial Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh Assembly elections.
The committee had also met on August 16 and candidates were announced for 39 constituencies in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and 21 in Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh a day later. These were seats where the BJP does not have sitting MLAs.
Sources said Wednesday’s meeting is likely to see deliberations on 50 constituencies in Madhya Pradesh and 35 in Chhattisgarh. Madhya Pradesh has 230 Assembly seats and Chhattisgarh has 90.
The other members of the committee include BJP President J P Nadda, Home Minister Amit Shah and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.
The naming of the candidates in August, which was done three months ahead of the polls in the states, had taken many people by surprise as it was the first time that the BJP had announced a list even before the Election Commission of India had declared the poll dates.
The move was seen as an attempt to pre-empt any friction within the party and iron out issues ahead of the elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Mizoram. This is especially important as the party had lost in all the states in 2018, except Mizoram, where an NDA ally had formed the government with the BJP as a minor partner.
The party had bounced back in the Lok Sabha elections the next year, sweeping Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, and doing better than the Congress in Telangana. It also managed to unseat the Kamal Nath government in Madhya Pradesh, following the rebellion led by Jyotiraditya Scindia, and Shivraj Singh Chouhan took oath as chief minister in 2020.
Like in 2018, the elections in the five states are being seen as a ‘semi-final’ ahead of the Lok Sabha elections next year. They have become even more important because of the BJP’s big loss in Karnataka in May, which has ensured that the party is not in power in any state in south India.
