BJP plays it cool on Shah-CM meet
2 min readPatna: No one in the BJP is willing to confirm whether Amit Shah will meet chief minister Nitish Kumar on July 12, when the BJP national president is scheduled to visit Bihar, even as speculation builds over seat-sharing for the 2019 general election.
“We have no official information about any such meeting. We have not even received the itinerary of our president’s visit to the state till now,” a senior BJP office bearer said on Tuesday.
Another senior functionary parried a direct answer, but dropped a hint. “When our president visited Maharashtra he called on Shiv Sena supremo Uddhav Thackeray. Similarly he met Parkash Singh Badal during his Chandigarh visit. We hope that a similar meeting with JDU president Nitish Kumar too would take place when he would be visiting Bihar,” said the BJP office bearer. While the guessing game is on about the Shah-Nitish meeting against the backdrop of the muscle-flexing by some JDU leaders regarding seat-sharing in Bihar in 2019, the BJP is busy enhancing its penetration at the grassroots level in the state.
“We will present a detailed report to the party president about our organisational expansion work,” said the BJP office bearer and added that a at present the state unit is busy cross-checking the identity of members who have been linked with the grassroots units, the BJP leader said. One of the top priorities of the party is to set up booth-level committees. So far over 50,000 such committees have been set up for the roughly 62,000 polling booths in Bihar.
“We are aiming to touch 55,000 mark by the time the national president visits Bihar. At the same time our dedicated team is cross-checking the credentials of those who have been made members of these committees,” said the party functionary.
The BJP has also set up 10,000 Shakti Kendra in-charges, who had been given responsibility of at the panchayat level and in areas under urban local bodies. The Bihar BJP is also planning to accord a grand welcome to Shah and suggestions have been sought from party members on how to make the event memorable.
“We intend to do something unique to welcome our president,” said the BJP functionary.
Courtesy: The Telegraph
