BJP national council to focus on Maharashtra, Haryana polls

The BJP’s national council will meet here on Saturday to ratify the appointment of Amit Shah as the party chief and outline challenges ahead of the Assembly elections to Maharashtra and Haryana.

The day-long session, being held at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, will start with ratification of Shah’s appointment as new president, followed by his speech. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will sign off the meeting with his address to workers and top leaders coming from across the nation. 

Party patriarch L K Advani will also share his thoughts with party leaders and workers, besides other senior leaders such as Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj.The appointment of Shah as party chief–after Rajnath Singh resigned on July 9 after taking charge as the home minister–was approved by the BJP’s parliamentary board.   

Shah will be party president till January 2016, the remaining period of Singh’s tenure. The president gets a 3 year term only when he is elected. After the session, Shah will start the process of consultations with senior party leaders as well as with the RSS on rolling out his new team. Assembly elections in Haryana and Maharashtra may take place anytime in October.

Since the national council meeting has been reduced to a day, it would adopt only one resolution that would acknowledge the sweeping victory of the BJP due to the Modi wave and focus on other political and economic issues. 

The party had constituted a team to work on the political resolution and prepare a draft which would also incorporate steps taken by the two-month old NDA government and what it intends to do in the future.