Newly elected BJP Rajya Sabha member from Uttar Pradesh and national OBC president K. Laxman has been in the hot seat in the past few days ever since he was made chairman of the organising committees to oversee the national office bearers, national executive and the public meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Parade Grounds, Secunderabad, this weekend. In this exclusive interview, he explains the significance of these programmes.
Question: The BJP’s top leadership will be here for the meetings for two days, why Telangana?
Answer: Our party is focusing on Telangana as we see a political vacuum with the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) led by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao losing credibility and faith among people as they are vexed with his autocratic, corrupt and dynastic rule. The Congress is anyway in cahoots with TRS as has become evident once again in the latter’s support to Yashwant Sinha in the presidential elections. In fact, every party is against us now. We want to use these programmes to strengthen our party with an aim to come to power in the next elections. People are looking up to us and we are urging them to be patient for one more year.
How will these meetings help you here?
We are going to have Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and national president J.P. Nadda actively participating in the programmes. The huge public meeting being planned at Parade Grounds will have Mr. Modi addressing people of Telangana directly. Coinciding with these meetings, we are having top leaders from across the nation reaching out to people in 119 Assembly constituencies taking stock of our presence booth-wise. They are community interactions with linguistic minorities from other states who have settled here. These meetings will help us expand the base and boost the morale of our cadre.
What will be the focus of the party meetings?
The main deliberations will obviously be on national issues, the performance of the Modi Government in the last eight years and the future programmes . Mr. Nadda will be addressing the maiden meeting on July 2 and the Prime Minister himself on July 3 to the party delegates before the public meeting. The national leadership will be deciding on the resolutions to be passed and there could be mention of the states including Telangana.
I have had the honour of hosting it in 2004 when I was an MLA at Hotel Viceroy where leaders like Vajpayee, Advani and others had participated. That experience is helping in hosting this present meeting being held physically after a gap of three years due to the COVID pandemic. This time we have formed 34 committees to look into each and every aspect of the programmes like food, accommodation, reception committees, transport and so on. We have everything in place now and we are ready.
