As govt turns 3, BJP focuses on youth, Opposition-ruled states

As the Modi government celebrates three years, the BJP is all set to target the youth and Opposition-ruled states of Odisha, West Bengal and Kerala.

While it is sending a battery of union ministers and party leaders to these states, it is planning various programmes, including quiz competitions, at the MODI Fests to connect with the youth.

The three states are part of the BJP's plans to capture political space in unconquered areas. A party leader said a larger contingent of leaders from other states was going to these states because the BJP did not have MPs there. While in Kerala, the BJP has never won a Lok Sabha seat, from West Bengal it has two MPs and from Odisha one parliamentarian.

Several of the 120 seats, where the BJP is to focus on as part of its mission 2019, fall in the states in the east and south. West Bengal and Odisha are ruled by non-Congress regional heavyweights —Mamata Banerjee of Trinamool Congress and Naveen Patnaik of BJD— while the CPM-led LDF is in power in Kerala.

Two BJP chief ministers — Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh) and Raghubar Das (Jharkhand) — and Union ministers Ananth Kumar, Suresh Prabhu, Smriti Irani, Narendra Singh Tomar, and Santosh Gangwar are going to West Bengal besides state ministers and MPs.

A delegation of around seven union ministers—Venkaiah Naidu, Radha Mohan Singh, Dharmendra Pradhan, Mahesh Sharma, Ram Kripal Yadav, VK Singh, and Babul Supriyo — will be in Odisha.

Local body elections of 2016, in which the BJP increased its vote share by eight times, has enhanced hopes of the party in its preparations for 2019, when the state goes for assembly elections along with Lok Sabha polls.

The BJP is deputing five union ministers — JP Nadda, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Prakash Javadekar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Ramesh Jinghiani — to Kerala, where the BJP won its first ever assembly seat in 2016. In a state with a minority population of around 44 per cent, the BJP is trying to wean away the Hindu vote from the Left in the southern state.

BJP chief Amit Shah will himself be on a three-day visit to Kerala in the first week of June, as part of his 95-day tour across the country.

Analysis

The party has drawn up travel plans for 450 of its leaders, including union ministers and chief ministers
The MODI (Making of Developed India) Festival will be aimed at connecting with the people on major steps like demonetisation, surgical strikes in PoK and welfare schemes
UP CM Yogi Adityanath will be visiting Bihar. In the past three years, BJP had faced humiliating defeats in Bihar