NEW DELHI: The BJP appears to have put the Assembly poll debacle behind and has moved on to preparing for the big battle in 2019. At a party meeting in New Delhi on Thursday, chaired by BJP national president Amit Shah, no post-mortem of the defeat was done; instead the future plans were discussed. Shah cancelled his visit to Kurukshetra in Haryana to take part in the meeting. But, sources insisted the meeting was pre-decided and was not called to review the party’s poll performance.
“The party’s defeat in the Assembly elections was not discussed at the meeting,” BJP general secretary Bhupendra Yadav said. To step up the party’s campaign for the 2019 general election, meetings of the BJP National Council and other key wings will be held over the next two months. Sharing details of the programmes, Yadav said a two-day meeting of the national council will be held in New Delhi on January 11-12.
The party’s ‘Scheduled Tribe morcha’ will meet in Bhubaneswar on February 2-3 while the ‘OBC morcha’ meeting will be held in Patna on February 15-16. The ‘Kisan morcha’ meeting will be held in Uttar Pradesh on February 21-22. The ‘Scheduled Caste morcha’ meeting, to be held on January 19-20 in Nagpur, will be addressed by Shah. Sources said at the meeting, attended by national office bearers and state chiefs of the BJP, Shah asked the leaders to come with a report on the progress on the 22-point directive he had sent for booth managers.