Amit Shah to leaders, BJP secys: Gear up party for 2019

New Delhi: With an eye on the 2019 electoral battle, BJP president Amit Shah on Thursday held a review meeting with senior party leaders, including Central ministers, on organisational issues and the impact of various Central government schemes. Though there is over a year to go for the next Lok Sabha elections, Mr Shah wants the BJP organisation, including state units, to be battle ready for various state and local body elections whose result will also have an impact on the 2019 electoral battle.

The Central ministers at the meeting included Ravi Shankar Prasad, Piyush Goyal, Narendra Singh Tomar, J.P. Nadda, Dharmendra Pradhan, Nirmala Sitharaman and Manoj Sinha. The national general secretaries, including Murlidhar Rao, Kailash Vijayvargiya, Anil Jain and Ram Madhav, and joint general secretaries Saudan Singh, V. Satish, Shivprakash and B.L. Santosh also attended the meeting, that lasted nearly two hours at the party’s 11 Ashoka Road headquarters here. The BJP leaders, sources said, also discussed socio-economic issues and caste-wise distribution of voters in various states.

As part of Mr Shah’s election blueprint, the leadership has been assessing the “actual” organisational strength in all states, including BJP-ruled states. Mr Shah, who has been personally visiting state units for a “reality check” of the party’s strength, has assigned the national general secretaries and organisational secretaries to get feedback on various issues. Also, Central ministers and the general secretaries were given charge of parliamentary seats in which the party had either lost or had done poorly.

Mr Shah, it is learnt, discussed the feedback from states and reviewed the implementation and impact of Central government schemes. Sources said he also deliberated with senior party leaders on the issues that have been troubling the state units and also the BJP-ruled states.