All eyes would be on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi when Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) national executive committee will meet in Delhi on Friday. The national council – over the next two days – will discuss the preparations for assembly polls later this year and the Lok Sabha polls scheduled in 2014.
It will be first meeting of national council after Modi’s third successive win in the assembly polls in Gujarat and amid voices demanding that he be declared as the party’s prime ministerial candidate for the general elections.
Party sources said he could be made chief of the campaign committee for the Lok Sabha polls but an announcement was unlikely to be made at the national council meeting.
However, the national council is expected to endorse election of Rajnath Singh as party president.
The meeting, being held amid the Budget Session of Parliament, will discuss the party’s strategy against the United Progressive Alliance government on the issues of price rise, corruption and internal security.
Party sources said the leadership will deliberate on the strategy for the assembly polls beginning with Karnataka where the party will have to contend with the challenge of its own former leader BS Yeddyurappa besides the Congress and the Janata Dal-Secular.
Karnataka is the only southern state where BJP is in power. The term of state assembly will end in June this year.
The party has begun preparations for assembly polls later this year in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.
The national executive meeting will start with the address of Rajnath Singh.
“We will discuss the strategy for upcoming elections with the motto ‘Sushasan sankalp BJP vikalp (good governance is our determination, BJP is the alternative),” party leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said.
He said the meeting will discuss economic, social, political situation and the challenges before the country.
The meeting will be attended by members of BJP’s national council and national executive, MPs, legislators, state office bearers, national co-ordinators of frontal organizations and some other party functionaries.
The national executive meeting will be held in NDMC convention centre in the capital and the national council at the Talkatora stadium.
—IANS