Gujarat Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president C.R. Paatil has given party workers a target, to win each of the 26 parliamentary seats in the state by a margin of five lakh votes. He told cadres to start preparations for next year’s Lok Sabha polls.
In 2014 and 2019, the ruling BJP won all 26 Lok Sabha seats from the state.
Also read: The big win in Gujarat is Modi’s, and the BJP’s biggest
Now, after delivering a record breaking victory in last year’s Assembly polls in which the BJP won 156 out of 182 assembly seats, Mr Paatil has begun preparations for the national polls to be held next year.
Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel; union ministers from the state, state party head, Paatil and other leaders have been holding public meetings and conventions of workers in every district.
The meetings and conventions are being held to celebrate nine years of the NDA government led by PM Modi and also to mobilise cadres and workers for the next electoral battle.
On Thursday, addressing workers in Rajkot, Mr Paatil said that the BJP would register a hat-trick by winning all 26 Lok Sabha seats a third time but told workers the victory margin should exceeded five lakh votes.
“We will win all the seats but that is not the main goal now. The main goal is to win all the seats by a margin of five lakhs,” he said in his address to party workers in Rajkot.
Besides mobilising the cadres, the ruling party has also started an assessment of all 26 sitting parliamentarians from the state.
According to sources; the party will likely bring in new faces in many seats as two and three time MPs will have to make a way for new faces, replicating the exercise the BJP had undertaken in the assembly polls when more than 45 sitting MLAs were dropped.
“There will be charges in large number of seats,” a party leader said.
From Gujarat; four Lok Sabha members are ministers at the Centre: Amit Shah from Gandhinagar, Devusinh Chauhan from Kheda, Darshna Jardosh from Surat and Mahendra Munjapara from Surendranagar.
Other ministers like Parshottam Rupala and Mansukh Mandavia are Rajya Sabha members besides MEA minister S Jaishankar.
