The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has scheduled the meet for the parliamentary party at its newly built headquarters at Deendayal Upadhyay Marg in New Delhi on Friday. By doing this, they have broken an age old tradition of holding the meeting at the Parliament’s library building or the Parliament Annexe every Tuesday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah will also attend the meeting in the evening. All the 322 Members of Upper and Lower Parliament House and the Union Ministers belonging to the party are expected to attend the meet. The meet will be followed by a dinner.
The BJP has recently built a new swanky three-storied building at 6A, Deendayal Upadhyay Marg and shifted its headquarters there from the post-colonial Lutyen’s Delhi bungalow at 11 Ashoka Road.
“It’s a routine parliamentary party meeting. The only change is the venue. The basic objective of holding this meeting at our new office is to give the feel of this new headquarters to all the MPs, including the new ones. Discussions will also be the same as we do every Tuesday at the Parliament’s Library building or Annexe. It’s a routine affair,” a BJP MP told in an interview.
According to reliable sources, the meeting will be an important one due to some reasons despite it seeming to be a ‘routine affair’.
The BJP has been facing intense criticism ever since the second phase of the Budget Session was started on 5 March. The main party that has criticized the party is none other than NDA’s own ally Telugu Desam Party (TDP). Along with it, many other opposition parties protested against the government in the parliament, not allowing the procedures of the House to go smoothly and had led to daily adjournments without any serious business transactions. Modi is expected to talk over the issue with
The meeting has a significance as it is the first such after the BJP lost three Lok Sabha seats in the recently held by polls in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which includes UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s constituency Gorakhpur — a strong BJP stronghold. This will become an introspection session.
Modi and Amit Shah will discuss the issues in detail and give instructions to all the MPs whether how to tackle the situation in their respective constituencies afore the upcoming Assembly elections in the states of Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan and at last in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
“The prime minister may ask the MPs to tell the public about the benefits of government schemes, especially when the Opposition has been trying to attack the government,” a senior BJP functionary expected.
The Congress on the other side had already strategized to attack the Modi government, both inside and outside the Parliament. Inside the Parliament, it is hell bent in attacking the NDA through floor coordination. TDP is also another party which is against the NDA government and it recently quit the alliance. So the competition is going to be somewhat intense during the course of time.