JOIN USGadkari exhorts partymen to brace for early elections
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday told party leaders and workers at the national executive meeting to get ready for an early general election, positioning itself as the national political alternative as the ruling coalition allies are looking for safe passages to desert the Congress.
The BJP close-door national executive meeting started on Wednesday morning with the president’s address to 400-odd members here.
The three-day conclave that began with the national executive meeting will be followed by a national council where the party will be discussing over the strategy to reiterate the need for exploiting the sagging image of the corruption-ridden UPA government and the coming Assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat. Both elections, which came up for discussion, are crucial since they are governed by the BJP, and the result in the states will be a litmus test for the party’s future strategy.
Later, BJP spokesperson Ravishakar Prasad briefing the media about the president’s speech explained the current political scenario and conveyed that the “UPA government is shaky” while appealing to the cadre and leaders to reach out to the people with open hearts “as the polls are around the corner”.
“Given the uncertainity in the UPA government, the BJP is ready for election even in a month’s call,” Prasad said.
Apart from Gadkari, veteran BJP leaders LK Advani, Arun Jaitely, Rajnath Singh, Venkiah Naidu and state party chief ministers Arjun Munda, Raman Singh, Jagdish Shettar, Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Narendra Modi, who had skipped the Mumbai meet, were present at the conclave.
But the meet was marred by open defiance of sulking by former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa, who chose to attend a relaxation course in his state than attend the most important political event. Since he was forced to quit on a charge of corruption some time back, the Karnataka strongman has been publicly challenging the party leadership which has denied to fulfill his wish of coming back to state power, either as the chief minister or state party president. The Lingayat leader had threatened to launch a party which would make it difficult for the right wing party to hold on to their bastion in the South.
Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj is indisposed, but strangely former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje Scindhia was also absent from the meet. She is supposed to join on Thursday.
Shiromani Akali Dal leader president Sukhbir Badal’s statement that they were for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in retail also soured the gung-ho excitement of the BJP, with lawyer-cum-politician Prasad reiterating that the party strongly believes that FDI in retail was not in the interest of the nation. He said if the NDA comes to power, they will discontinue FDI in retail. Otherwise, too, BJP-ruled seven states will not implement FDI in retail, he emphasised.
The national executive also adopted economic and political resolutions that would be ratified by the national council when it meets for two days on Thursday.