New Delhi: The BJP central election committee (CEC) met on Tuesday to approve names of candidates for the impending Jharkhand Assembly polls. Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the meeting that was chaired by BJP president JP Nadda. The BJP CEC will likely meet on Wednesday to finalise the names of party candidates for the Maharashtra Assembly elections.
After the CEC meeting, which lasted for nearly three hours, the Jharkhand core group leaders held a meeting with Mr Nadda and Union home minister Amit Shah. The CEC and later the core group meeting were also attended by Jharkhand election in-charge and Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Assam chief minister and election co-in-charge Himanta Biswa Sharma.
Earlier during the day, the BJP core group leaders from Jharkhand held a meeting at Mr Chouhan's residence. The BJP is going to polls in Jharkhand with its allies -- the AJSU, the JD(U) and the LJP. The AJSU is likely to contest on nine seats, the JD(U) on two and the LJP on one Assembly seat. The alliance is yet to formally announce the seat-sharing formula.
The BJP has made demographic change and illegal immigrants its main poll planks in Jharkhand and has announced that if the party returns to power, it will implement the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The BJP leaders are aggressively campaigning in the tribal areas of the state on how the infiltrators are using forged documents and then marrying tribal girls, leading to land grabbing and massive demographic changes, which the JMM-led government is "supporting" due to the Opposition camp's appeasement politics.
Until a couple of months back, the JMM-led ruling alliance was seen as having an edge in the state. However, the BJP's aggressive campaigning, mainly in the tribal areas, about demographic changes and illegal immigrants is seen as advantageous for the party, which performed badly in the tribal seats during the Lok Sabha polls.
The tribal-dominated state with 81 Assembly constituencies will go to the polls in two phases -- November 13 and November 20. The Maharashtra elections are scheduled for November 20. The counting of votes will take place on November 23.