The names will be announced as part of BJP’s first list.
The BJP has almost finalised the names of its candidates on 144 Lok Sabha seats on which the party lost in the last elections. The names of the candidates on these seats will be announced as part of its first list before the end of the month, said sources who attended the just-concluded National Convention of the party.
The two-day convention also saw discussions on identifying Lok Sabha seats for almost 90% of party ministers who are currently members of Rajya Sabha. Source said barring two ministers from the Rajya Sabha, almost all of them are likely to get a party ticket in the coming parliamentary elections.
Meanwhile, various state units have started preparations for a drive after Prime Minister Narendra Modi told party workers at the convention to use the next 100 days for educating voters about the BJP government’s achievements over the past 10 years.
PM Modi had given the state units the target of increasing the party’s vote share by 10%.
Aiming to raise the party tally by 67 to touch 370 Lok Sabha seats from 303 of 2019, BJP strategists believe that there is scope to increase the number of seats in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Telangana. This is the reason why special discussions were held on these states during the just-concluded National Convention.
Special discussions were also held on 101 seats in the four southern states of Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. In 2019, only four seats were won by the party in these states.
While the party is in talks with the TDP in Andhra Pradesh, it has narrowed down on 7 seats in Tamil Nadu, 3 seats in Kerala and 15 seats in Telangana on which it is going to fight the Lok Sabha elections with force.
In 2019, the BJP had won all the 82 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat, Rajasthan and in eight other states.
In Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh the party’s victory percentage ranged between 80-90%. In these Hindi heartland states, where the party recently registered handsome victories in the Assembly elections, around 30-40% sitting Lok Sabha members are unlikely to be re-fielded, sources said.
The strategy for improving the party’s performance on the 144 seats it lost in 2019 is being crafted along with the party’s push to take as many devotees as possible to Ayodhya for Ram Lalla’s darshan over the next one month. The thinking within the party is to optimise the temple-related outreach in the next two months so that the BJP can beat the model code of conduct that may kick in around March-end with the announcement of the dates for the general elections. A party source said the target may be to get at least 5,000 devotees from all Lok Sabha constituencies.
Apart from welcoming devotees at the Ayodhya airport or railway station, transporting them from nearby towns in buses and arranging for the stay and darshan, the Uttar Pradesh unit of the BJP has been given the responsibility to take the lead in the initiative. An IT system is likely to be put in place which will intimate the UP unit’s arrangement parties whenever a BJP state unit gets a confirmation from a devotee who accepts the invitation to visit the Ram Janmabhoomi.