Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who has virtually taken the command of the Lok Sabha campaign of the BJP, on Tuesday asked the party leaders to start preparing aggressively for the general polls. Mr Modi, who attended his first meeting of the party’s highest decision making body — parliamentary board — since his appointment by party chief Rajnath Singh to it, also met national general secretaries and party’s media managers to review the preparation for the general polls as well as coming assembly polls in states like Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan and Delhi.
Considered as the frontrunner for the post of party’s prime ministerial candidate, Mr Modi is expected to head the overall campaign committee for the general polls.
Mr Modi asked party leaders to include social media as part of the poll campaign to woo voters, especially the youth.
But before attending the parliamentary board meeting, Mr Modi met BJP parliamentary party chairman L K Advani and termed the meeting as “wonderful”. Mr Advani is apparently not in favour of Mr Modi being projected as the PM candidate, despite growing clamour in favour of the Gujarat chief minister for the post.
Mr Modi also met former party chief Nitin Gadkari. After the meeting, Mr Modi met the party chief and party patriarch and former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
In the parliamentary board meeting, BJP top brass discussed strategy for the coming polls, including general polls, and decided to aggressively highlight the scams and “failures” of the Congress-led UPA government.
The party is launching a nationwide “Jail Bharo Andolan” from May 27 for a week, highlighting UPA’s corrupt practises and scams under its nine years rule.
The parliamentary board also discussed issues that would be taken up at the upcoming meetings of party’s national office-bearers and executive in Goa from June 7 to 9.
“We discussed the nine years of UPA rule. This government has failed on all fronts, be it price rise, internal and external security or the economic situation. BJP will launch a jail bharo (court arrest) programme from May 27 to June 2,” parliamentary board’s secretary Ananth Kumar said after the meeting.
The meeting was attended by party chief Rajnath Singh, Mr Advani, Mr Gadkari, both the Leaders of Opposition — Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, along with other members of the board.
Sources disclosed the main opposition is likely to come out with a “report card” against the UPA government on Wednesday, the ninth anniversary of the Congress-led UPA.