Modi warns BJP leaders of getting complacent ahead of 2019 polls

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday cautioned BJP leaders against getting complacent ahead of the coming crucial electoral battles in the states, and in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, and asked them to strengthen the organisational “roots” (booth level). 

Mr Modi, who was attending the first BJP parliamentary party meeting after the recent electoral victories, also got emotional, thrice, as he recalled how the party had gained electorally as well as organisationally since its inception and how party stalwarts, including patriarch and former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee had groomed young leaders, including himself. 

The Prime Minister was given a standing ovation by party leaders for the recent electoral victories in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat. In his speech, Mr Modi also pitched for promoting young faces inside and outside the party for a “New India”, a vision for 2022 promoted by his government. Later, party MPs from Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat also met the PM separately to congratulate and felicitate him.

Asking the BJP leaders not to get affected by the Opposition’s “disinformation” campaign against the party, the PM said that booth-level work, which was the root of a poll campaign, was the mother of an election victory. 

It was learnt that he said the Congress under Indira Gandhi had got to rule 18 states but the BJP and its allies were already in power in 19 states now, and the party had achieved such a political feat in its three-and-a-half-year rule at the Centre. He got emotional when he recalled the work of Makrand Desai, Arvind Maniyar and Vasantrao Gajendragadkar, among others, in building the party, known as the Jan Sangh in its earlier avatar, in Gujarat, sources said.

Despite the Congress claiming a “moral victory” after scoring its highest tally in Gujarat and pushing the BJP to its lowest score in the last many elections, Mr Modi asserted it was a big win for his party in his home state.