BHUBANESWAR: With focus on general elections in 2024, the national leadership of the BJP has started collecting information on “weak” and “very weak” parliamentary constituencies of the State, where the party lost by slender margin or came second in 2019. After the special outreach programme during the first half of June when Union Ministers visited different parliamentary constituencies highlighting the achievements of the Narendra Modi-led NDA government in the last eight years, central BJP functionaries have started visiting the State to monitor the preparedness of the party for the 2024 elections.
BJP is focusing more on the parliamentary constituencies, and Assembly seats under them, where the party lost to its rival by a low margin.As part of the programme, national BJP vice-president and former president of West Bengal BJP Dilip Ghose was on a two-day visit to the State and held closed-door meetings with State functionaries, prabharis (organisational in-charge) and key district functionaries at the party’s state office here on Sunday.
Though State BJP president Samir Mohanty said it was a routine review of organisational matters, sources in the party said that Ghose took stock of the eight parliamentary seats where the BJP was winner. Apart from reviewing organisational activities, he collected data on the delivery of Central welfare programmes to the constituents and issues in favour and against the party. Ghose, who left for Kolkata on Monday, will submit his report to the organisational in-charge of the party at the Central level. Close on the heels of Ghose’s visit, national BJP secretary Harish Dwivedi, MP from Uttar Pradesh is coming to the State for a similar exercise. Dwivedi will take stock of the remaining parliamentary constituencies at a meeting here on Tuesday.
The BJP had lost four Lok Sabha seats of Puri, Bhadrak, Dhenkanal and Nabarangpur by a slender margin in 2019 elections. The party has identified 144 Lok Sabha seats across the country including four from Odisha, which it lost last time narrowly. The party has drawn a detailed plan to strengthen its presence in these seats during the 2024 elections. A Central committee of the BJP comprising national leaders is supervising the entire programme. A State committee will execute the plans made by the central committee based on the reports of the two leaders on the ground.