Booth committee meetings, candidate selection process have begun.
The West Bengal unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has begun preparations for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The party is eyeing to get at least 22 seats from the state, given the traction it, it believes, has been able to get on the ground since the last two years.
Sources in the Bengal BJP have said that booth committee meetings with regard to the 2019 general elections have begun and that the candidate selection process for every Lok Sabha seat in the state is also on.
A senior party functionary from the state told this correspondent, “Booth level meetings have already begun with all our ground level workers to devise the strategy that we will be taking when we start our campaigning for the 2019 general elections. At the booth level, we are currently analysing the voter lists and holding meetings with district convenors along with every Vidhan Sabha coordinator on a regular basis to take feedback from the ground.”
“The party is also looking forward to millennial voters or the new voters. The youth of Bengal connects with the BJP at every chord and therefore we will convince them that the BJP is the best alternative in Bengal that can bring employment and better the standards of living in Bengal,” the senior party functionary said. The BJP has already emerged as the main Opposition party in Bengal and has seen an increasing vote share in bypolls held in the state during the last two years and the recently concluded Panchayat elections, where, for the first time, the BJP made significant inroads into the local bodies in Bengal.
According to many BJP leaders in Bengal, these “phenomenal results” have boosted the confidence of the party cadres to achieve the target of 22 seats in the Lok Sabha elections out of the 42 seats that Bengal has in the Lower House of Parliament. This is also what BJP’s national president Amit Shah had said when he had visited Bengal in August.
Shah has also declared to have “42 war rooms” in Bengal headed by several district and state presidents to monitor the 2019 poll preparations. Sources also said that Shah would personally supervise the preparations in Bengal.
Another senior BJP leader from Bengal said that to achieve the target set by Shah for Bengal, the party needs to start preparing and working right away as the Lok Sabha elections are less than a year away.
“The BJP in Bengal will have to do away with any differences that they have among each other and work in full coordination to achieve this target as the potential for the party in Bengal is very high. If they (party leaders) continue to remain in factions, the desired result cannot be achieved. At district levels, campaigning will start from the end of this month and the party will focus on door-to-door campaigning to reach out to every voter and make them realise the misrule of the Mamata Banerjee government,” the state BJP leader cited earlier said.
At the national level, the BJP is looking at states such as West Bengal, Odisha aming the other eastern states to increase its tally in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and return with a full majority.