New Delhi, Sep 24 (PTI) The top leadership of the Delhi BJP will hold a two-day ‘Chintan Shivir’ in Rajasthan to chalk out a strategy for the upcoming Assembly polls in the national capital, party leaders said on Tuesday.
The extended core committee, including the MPs and MLAs of the Delhi BJP, besides top office bearers of the party, will participate in the camp at the Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve on September 28-29, said a party functionary.
The BJP has been out of power in Delhi since 1998 and the last Assembly polls won by it was more than three decades ago in 1993.
In the next six Assembly polls, the party’s endeavours to come back to power were thwarted first by the Sheila Dikshit-led Congress and later by the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party which has been in power since 2013.
More than 40 top leaders of the Delhi BJP, including state president Virendra Sachdeva and office bearers of the party, will take part in the gathering.
“Issues ranging from replacement of Arvind Kejriwal as Delhi chief minister by Atishi and the poll strategy of the BJP will be on the table,” said a core committee member.
The core committee of the Delhi BJP includes 13 functionaries. The extended committee also includes those heading frontal organisations of the party.
“The party believes it’s the first opportunity after a long time to stage a comeback in Delhi. The factors supporting this belief include Kejriwal facing corruption charges and the people of Delhi suffering from recurrent problems of polluted water supply, dilapidated civic services and inflated power bills,” said a senior Delhi BJP leader.
In the last Assembly polls, the BJP was routed by the AAP and won 62 Assembly constituencies out of a total of 70. The BJP won just eight.
A party insider said that a “wider outline” for upcoming assembly polls will be drawn with an eye on the changed political situation in the city, focussing also on the problems faced by the slum dwellers, the middle class as well as the traders, businessmen and professionals.
The party will also brainstorm over ways to counter the impact of freebies like electricity and water provided by the AAP government on the lower middle-class voter psyche who otherwise face many different problems that are mostly because of “apathy and neglect” of the government like poor infrastructure and delivery of civic amenities, he said.
Earlier this month, Sachdeva met the party’s national president J P Nadda and briefed him about the “changing” political scenario in the capital, he added.
The last time Delhi BJP leaders held a ‘Chintan Shivir’ was under Sachdeva’s predecessor Adarsh Gupta’s leadership in 2022 ahead of the civic body polls. The BJP lost the elections at the hands of the AAP. PTI VIT RHL
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