BJP ‘manthan shivir’ tomorrow to firm up election strategy

Pradeep Sharma

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Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 3

State BJP top leaders, including Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and his Cabinet colleagues, will hold a ‘’manthan shivir’’ (brainstorming session) on September 5 to firm up a strategy for the parliamentary and Assembly elections due next year.

The session, to be organised in Chandigarh or nearby area, will also be attended by chairpersons and deputy chairpersons of various boards and corporations, besides the office-bearers of the party. “In fact, the occasion will be used to review the performance of various welfare schemes and take feedback from party leaders,” sources told The Tribune here on Saturday.

Krishan Kumar Bedi, Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment, said that the participants in the session would deliberate on various welfare schemes launched by the Central and state governments.

The sources said that besides reviewing the performance of welfare schemes, the party would try to prepare a blueprint for the next parliamentary and Assembly elections. “The election preparedness is an ongoing process. The BJP as an organisation is always ready for elections. The issues, which have a bearing on the elections due next year, will definitely be discussed in the session,” said Rajiv Jain, Chief Minister’s Media Adviser.

The BJP session assumes importance against the backdrop that the INLD is getting aggressive over the Sutlej and Yamuna Link (SYL) canal issue and has announced a statewide bandh on September 8. The Congress is taking to streets against the BJP’s alleged acts of omission and commission.

A view in the state government is that the achievements of the Central and state governments are not being adequately publicised by the bureaucracy. The current session would try to identify the gap in the publicity strategy of the state government so that the information about its achievements in various fields reaches the grass-roots level.

Earlier, the state government had held a three-day ‘’Chintan shivir’’ at a luxury resort, Timber Trail, in December last year in which the performance of various programmes and policies were reviewed. The Council of Ministers and senior bureaucrats had attended that session though party office-bearers were not invited.