New Delhi: BJP president J P Nadda on Monday underlined the importance of the nine state assembly polls to be held this year in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, and asked the party's national executive to ensure it does not lose in any state.
Briefing reporters on Nadda's address to the key BJP body, whose two-day meeting began here on Monday, party leader and former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the party president noted that the ongoing year was very important in the prelude to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The ruling party has been putting in place a number of exercises to strengthen its organisation to ensure that it comes back to power in 2024 at the Centre for a third term.
Nadda, in his closed-door address, lauded India's progress under the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government. It has become the world's fifth-largest economy, second-largest manufacturer of mobile phones, third-largest manufacturer in the auto sector while the highway being built every day has risen to 37 km from 12 km earlier, the party president said.
The country has also worked to empower the poor with a number of welfare schemes, including that of free grains, he added. Nadda praised the party's win in the recent Gujarat assembly polls as "extraordinary and historic", saying winning more than 150 seats in the 182-member assembly is a great achievement. While the party lost in Himachal Pradesh to the Congress, the vote gap between the two parties was less than one per cent, he said.
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PM Modi holds grand roadshow
Enthused BJP workers and supporters lined the roads to greet Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his roadshow here as the party's two-day national executive meeting. In an atmosphere enlivened by music and the cheering crowd, the roadshow started from Patel Chowk and continued till the NDMC convention centre. People showered Modi with flower petals and chanted slogans in his support.
Huge cutouts of the prime minister were placed along the road, besides several posters highlighting various initiatives of the government and also India's presidency of the G20. Stages had been erected at places. Folk artistes from several states performed on some of them, while others blared patriotic songs. BJP president J P Nadda welcomed Modi at the venue of the party's meeting, which started upon the prime minister's arrival.
While Modi has frequently been holding roadshows, it is not very often that he does it ahead of the party executive, which has been organised several times in the national capital now. BJP leaders noted that Modi had held a roadshow ahead of the party's national executive in Odisha, and added that the exercise proved to be helpful in galvanising cadre and supporters.
With Lok Sabha polls due in the first half of next year, the enthusiastic roadshow will also help energise the party's Delhi unit after its loss to the Aam Aadmi Party in the recent municipal polls, they said.
