BHUBANESWAR: National BJP general secretary and Odisha in-charge D Purandeswari is reported to have given a pep talk to the demoralised State leadership of the party ahead of the elections to the urban local bodies. Arriving in the State a day after a meeting of national general secretaries chaired by party president JP Nadda in New Delhi on Saturday, Purandeswari held a closed-door meeting with a select few including State unit president Samir Mohanty and three of the five general secretaries at the party headquarters here on Sunday.
While leaders who attended the meeting said it was a routine one, sources privy to the discussions said she has taken the massive debacle of the BJP in the recent panchayat election very seriously. Purandeswari who has been visiting Odisha almost every month after taking over the charge of the State had never expected the party to perform miserably in the rural polls.
Aware of the factionalism in the State unit of the party and not many senior leaders taking interest in party affairs, the former Union Minister is reported to have told the State leadership that it is their job to bring unity and work in cohesion for the greater interest of the party.
Senior BJP leader and former minister Bijoy Mohapatra had exposed the chinks in the party’s ability to take on the ruling BJD and lambasted the State leadership for their poor homework before the election.
Mohapatra had commented that he was least surprised by the poll results because the party had not done its homework. The kind of preparations the BJP had made during the 2017 panchayat elections was missing and there was no strategy nor any blueprint for this election.