After defeat in Telangana, BJP to focus on Parliamentary elections
HYDERABAD: After a humbling loss in the recently-concluded elections, a national-level meeting is being convened by the BJP national unit in New Delhi on Thursday. With the 2019 Parliamentary elections just months away, the meeting, addressed by party president Amit Shah, is likely to discuss the Telangana polls debacle prominently.
“We will have a meeting with Amit Shah in New Delhi to discuss what went wrong in the elections,” BJP State president K Laxman informed Express. “We have to improve our cadre strength and work towards the upcoming Parliamentary elections,” he added. With the saffron party being reduced to all of one seat in the State, a trickle-down effect is likely to affect the party’s chances in the civic body polls. This might subsequently influence the Parliamentary elections as well. But the party hopes that the upcoming parliamentary elections will be contested on a different note. “The elections will be a bi-polar contest between the Congress and BJP.
The TRS’ relevance will not be reflected there. The micromodel approach that we had will not be repeated in 2019,” said Krishna Sagar Rao, BJP chief spokesperson. However, in the present situation that the BJP is poised at, it has only one parliamentary seat - Secunderabad represented by Bandaru Dattatreya. The senior leader has been, last year, asked to give up his duties as a cabinet minister for labour and employment.
And, there are talks that the party would want a younger face to replace him. The party is now hoping to give a tough fight in Secunderabad, Mahabubnagar, Bhongir, Nalgonda, Nizamabad, Medak, Zaheerabad, and Chevella Parliamentary constituencies. “We will give shocking surprises to the TRS and AIMIM with the kind of candidates that we will field. It will be a mix of new and old faces in all the 17 constituencies,” said Sridhar Reddy, BJP spokesperson who contested from Jubilee Hills Assembly segment on behalf of the party recently. However, he had to face failure as well.