NEW DELHI: The BJP chief Amit Shah is learnt to have firmed up Mission 350+ for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Shah held a marathon meeting with all the party general secretaries and scores of Union Ministers at the party headquarter on Thursday.
“The BJP chief has asked the ministers and party functionaries to begin focussing on Lok Sabha constituencies where the party lost in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The party will approach the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with Mission 350+,” said a senior BJP functionary.
Besides all the party general secretaries, Union ministers – Ravi Shankar Prasad, Prakash Javdekar, Piyush Goyal, Nirmala Sitharaman, Dharmendra Pradhan, J P Nadda, Narendra Singh Tomar, Manoj Sinha, Arjun Meghwal attended the marathon meeting with the party chief which lasted for about two hours.
A few ministers from the state governments, including Mangal Pandey (Bihar), also attended the meeting.
Sources said that the party chief has asked the ministers to take responsibility for a few of the constituencies where the party lost in the 2014 elections.
“Since the ministers who attended the meeting have also been in-charges for states where either elections were held or they are going to the polls soon, the party chief asked them to begin working on strategies for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. A lot of stress was given in the party to win constituencies where the party has never won in the past so as to allow the BJP to cross 350 mark in the 2019 general elections,” added the BJP functionary.
The BJP chief is learnt to have told the ministers and party functionaries to focus on states like Odisha, West Bengal, Telangana, Kerala, Tamil Nadu to win additional Lok Sabha seats. The BJP had launched Mission 275+ for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
“The meeting also laid focus on the closer government and party relations and to allow the achievements of the ruling NDA to reach on the ground. The ministers will need to shoulder party responsibilities and actively take up the organisational expansion works in the near future,” sources added.