BJP holds marathon meeting to discuss strategy for Maharashtra assembly polls

Mumbai: The Maharashtra unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held a marathon meeting here to discuss strategy for the upcoming state assembly elections, sources said on Saturday.

During the meeting held on Friday night, discussions were held for five hours on how to plan the election campaign and finalise the strategy, they said.

Elections to the 288-member state assembly are likely to be held in October.

In the recently-held Lok Sabha elections, the BJP's seat tally in Maharashtra dropped from 23 to nine. The ruling Mahayuti, comprising the BJP, Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar-led NCP, bagged only 17 out of the 48 Lok Sabha seats, whereas the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), a three-party alliance of Congress, NCP (SP) and Shiv Sena (UBT) won 30 seats.

Talking about the meeting, a BJP source said, "Our first meeting, which lasted for five hours, discussed the preliminary blueprint prepared for the assembly polls. The action plan will be finalised soon and more meetings have been planned." The core committee meeting was attended by Union minister Piyush Goyal, BJP general secretary Vinod Tawde, party's state president Chandrashekar Bawankule, Mumbai unit chief Ashish Shelar, senior leaders Raosaheb Danve and Pankaja Munde, among others.

Sea-sharing talks with allies will be held at a later stage, the source added.

The BJP currently has 104 MLAs in the 288-member House. Undivided Shiv Sena had won 56 seats in alliance with the BJP in 2019. But the Uddhav Thackeray-led party later snapped ties with the BJP after a dispute over sharing the chief minister's post.