New Delhi: Undaunted and undetered after the battle for the Himachal Assembly was decided in favour of its rival Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in neighbouring Uttarakhand has already set its target for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The ruling party in the state has lined up a series of high-level meetings with ministers and office bearers to discuss preparations and plans for the 2024 elections.
Not wasting any time after the BJP came out second-best in the closely fought Himachal Assembly polls, the party's Uttrakhand in-charge Dushyant Gautam has convened a meeting of all MPs of the state in the national capital, New Delhi, on Monday.
The agenda for the meeting, according to sources, is to discuss the party's strategy and preparations for the next Lok Sabha elections as well as the next Assembly elections of the state.
"Our (Uttarakhand) in-charge Dushyant Gautam will hold a meeting with all MPs of the state in New Delhi on Monday. Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami will also attend the meeting, which is scheduled to be held at former CM Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank's residence, before 8 pm," a BJP source said.
Elaborating on the meeting further, he said, "Those attending the meeting will brainstorm on initiatives mooted at our recent office bearers' meeting, with an eye on the next Lok Sabha elections."
In the Himachal Assembly polls, where several seats were decided by a few hundred votes, the Congress staged an electoral turnaround after a spate of defeats, bagging a total of 40 seats.
While the BJP could only aggregate 25 seats, the difference in vote share between the two parties was less than 1 per cent. The same was highlighted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to party supporters at a meeting to celebrate the BJP's landslide win in Gujarat on December 8.
The Congress' Himachal chief and widow of former CM Virbhadra Singh, Pratibha Singh, while not pitching herself as the CM candidate, reminded the Congress that the polls were fought in the name of the late former CM and his legacy should not be ignored while deciding the chief minister.
However, notwithstanding protests on the streets by Pratibha Singh's followers, demanding that she be made the next CM, the Congress high-command eventually veered to Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu as the next chief minister.
Though the Congress managed to win Himachal Pradesh, it slipped to its worst-ever performance in Gujarat where the BJP tallied 156 seats, its best-ever electoral haul in the state.
With Gujarat again reposing its faith in the BJP, the party has already set sights on winning the next Lok Sabha polls. —ANI