Bhopal, Nov 3 With about a year left before the state goes to the polls, the ruling BJP in Madhya Pradesh has shifted the party headquarters in Bhopal, and will contest the 2023 elections from the new office.
The BJP's new headquarters would be a temporary one for the next two years, as the old party office would be demolished and a new multi-story party headqaureters would be built on the same spot.
Spread over five acres, the BJP's temporary party headquarters used to be the Regional Transport Office (RTO) earlier, which has now been shifted to another location.
The state BJP had earlier planned to build the new multi-storey party office ahead of next year's Assembly elections scheduled in November-December 2023. However, since the project will take at least two-and-a-half years to complete, the BJP has now decided to operate from the temporary office till then.
On Ganesh Chaturthi (August 31), state BJP President V.D. Sharma had performed 'puja' at the new party office and the shifting process started after Diwali.
Sources said that many BJP leaders have expressed their displeasure over shifting the party office to a new building, claiming that the party had won three consecutive Assembly elections from the old headquarters.
The to-be-demolished BJP party office Deen Dayal Parishar was established in 1991 during the tenure of then Chief Minister Sunderlal Patwa.
"We wanted to have a new party headquarters ahead of the Assembly elections, but it's a big project and will take at least two-three years to complete. Therefore, it was decided to shift the party office. We will formulate strategies for the 2023 Assembly elections from the temporary office," a BJP office-bearer told .
Notably, a group of veteran BJP leaders in the state had even opposed the decision to demolish the existing party headquarters, stating that it carries the memories of party's leaders who strengthened the BJP in Madhya Pradesh over the decades.
Objection to demolition process came to the fore in September when former Rajya Sabha member Raghunandan Sharma's letter to the party's national President J.P. Nadda went viral on social media.
In the three-page letter, Sharma had detailed the memories associated with the venue and how BJP leaders and workers worked hard for building the party headquarters for a few decades.
Sharma also compared the decision to demolish the present party office to "a mad elephant crushing its own soldiers", and appealed to the top party leadership to reconsider the move.
He also alleged that the decision was taken without taking into consideration the opinion of the senior party leaders in the state.
Meanwhile, renovation work has also started at the state Congress headquarters Indira Gandhi Bhavan ahead of the Assembly elections. A seperate IT cell has been set up on the basement of the building, which was lying vacant till now.
Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor