After bypolls wins in Azamgarh, Rampur, BJP sets sight on 14 opposition controlled LS seats for 2024 polls

In a meeting of BJP’s ‘Lok Sabha Pravaas Yojana’ held on Wednesday in Lucknow attended by Lok Sabha in charges and coordinators of all 80 seats and addressed by senior BJP functionaries like general secretary of organisation Sunil Bansal and Rajya Sabha MP Naresh Bansal, the party chalked out a two-year strategy for tour and stay of in charges in all of 80 LS seats.

For the 14 seats currently occupied either by the SP, BSP or the Congress, the party has decided four central ministers will be made in charge who will then visit the seats every month until 2024, and oversee the progress being made there by the local party organisation. The ministers include minister for railways, communication, electronics and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw, minister for agriculture Narendra Singh Tomar and ministers of state Annapurna Devi and Jitendra Singh.

The party had devised the same strategy for the 78 non-BJP assembly seats ahead of the elections in 2022, thus appointing ministers to oversee preparations in these seats, which in turn led to it registering wins in 29 out of these 78 seats even though its total number of seats came down from 312 to 255.

Therefore, the idea is to create a similar buffer in seats it lost in 2019, to offset likely losses in 2024, a senior UP BJP functionary said. Besides, 12 out of the 14 seats were won by the BJP in 2014, except Mainpuri (won by Mulayam Singh Yadav) and Raebareli (won by Sonia Gandhi), which further establishes that the seats are not non-breachable, he said.