News Mania Desk /Piyal Chatterjee/4th October 2024
As it prepares to challenge the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the February 2025 Delhi Assembly elections, the BJP plans to exploit accusations of corruption against the AAP regime and its purported failure to provide “effective governance” as part of its platform. The BJP would try to maintain appropriate unity and coordination within its ranks in Delhi, where the party has been out of power since 1998, in addition to concentrating on “swing seats.”
These are some of the election tactics that the Delhi BJP finalized during a “Chintan Baithak” that took place in Ranthambore, Rajasthan, on September 28 and 29. Present at the meeting, which was presided over by Virendra Sachdeva, the head of the Delhi BJP, were all seven Lok Sabha MPs and seven MLAs, as well as Pawan Rana, the party’s general secretary (organization).
Prominent BJP figures also participated in this brainstorming session, including national general secretary Dushyant Gautam, co-incharge of the Delhi BJP Alka Gurjar, and party national general secretary (organization) B L Santhosh. The conference was also attended by former Members of Parliament Harsh Vardhan, Parvesh Verma, and Ramesh Bidhuri.
“Coordination and putting up a united front were among the key issues which came up for discussion. The leaders present there (at Chintan Baithak) were told to let go of internal disagreements and ensure that any bickerings among each other over any issue does not surface in public,” a BJP source said.
“One of the reasons why the meeting was held in Rajasthan was to ensure that these leaders, who will be both the backbone as well as the faces of the party’s poll campaign, learn to increasingly work together by staying together. This was the second such retreat for these leaders after one in Vrindavan a few weeks ago,” the source said, adding that such an interaction between the party’s state and senior leaders, including the organisational representatives from the RSS, “usually occur closer to elections”.
It is believed that the BJP’s central leadership instructed the party’s members to “lead the party’s revival bid “from the front”” in the nation’s capital, where the party had failed to win the Assembly elections for the previous six years.
