New Delhi, Aug 13 As the opposition parties have come together by forging ‘INDIA’ bloc, the BJP also does not want to leave anything to chance, and is gearing up for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
In view of the same, the BJP convened a meeting of 39 constituents of NDA in Delhi under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 18 and asked everyone to be active in view of the Lok Sabha elections.
On August 11, the BJP also held a day-long meeting of the spokespersons of all the allies including its party in the Parliament Annexe located in the Parliament House Complex and also advised them to speak in unison.
It is being said that this time the BJP is not only taking feedback, conducting surveys at many levels to find the candidates for the Lok Sabha seats, but it is also working equally hard on those Lok Sabha seats where the leaders of NDA's allies are currently MPs or the seats from where NDA's new and old partners are preparing for 2024.
According to sources, BJP is continuously taking feedback on all 543 seats in the country and if needed, this feedback can also be shared with the allies. The BJP will try to find out from the allies that if those particular seats are given to them from the NDA quota, then who will they make a candidate from there and what will be the possibility of their winning.
If the matter gets stuck between the constituents on a particular seat, as is the case between Pashupati Paras and Chirag Paswan regarding the Hajipur Lok Sabha seat, then in such a case the final decision will also be taken by the BJP high command. There is every possibility of a tussle between Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) and NCP (Ajit Pawar faction) over several Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra, and in such a situation, the BJP will convene a meeting of both the parties and decide on the basis of the candidate's winnability.
BJP allies from several other states including Upendra Kushwaha and Jitan Ram Manjhi in Bihar, Om Prakash Rajbhar and Sanjay Nishad in Uttar Pradesh, Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa from Punjab have also put up their demands before the BJP to contest the Lok Sabha elections.
According to sources, the BJP will also seek the names of seat-wise candidates from all allies which wish to contest the Lok Sabha polls, and seats will be given to them only if they are likely to win and have an edge over the rest of the parties in a particular state.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, out of 543 Lok Sabha seats in the country, the BJP alone contested 436 Lok Sabha seats and the party gave the remaining seats to its allies. This time also, the party wants to contest alone 425-450 Lok Sabha seats. In that case, the BJP will try to offer Lok Sabha seats to 10-12 political parties out of about 40 allies while promise MLA or MLC posts to the rest of the allies in a bid to keep the NDA alliance intact.
However, one thing is very clear that this time not only the contenders of the BJP, but also the leaders seeking tickets from the NDA alliance will have to go through the saffron party’s tough candidate selection procedure.
--IANS
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