Lok Sabha Elections 2019: PM Narendra Modi to Tour 20 States in 100 Days as BJP Revives ‘Mission 123’

In these 100 days, PM Modi would be seeking support from voters while addressing his party workers as well.

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) plans to go all out to cover lost ground for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, said reports. Fresh from the defeat of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh Assembly elections, the party has planned a series of events to be headlined by the Prime Minister in the next 100 days.

So in the next 100 days, the PM would be holding 100 rallies in 20 states. According to a report in Hindustan Times, the party has also revived its ‘Mission 123’ focusing on the 123 seats that the party contested but lost in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Last year, the saffron party had categorised these 123 constituencies into 25 clusters, with one leader heading each of the clusters.

In these 100 days, PM Modi would be seeking support from voters while addressing his party workers as well, “activating” them, as it were. The key focus areas would be states like West Bengal, Assam and Odisha — they account for 77 Lok Sabha seats, of which the BJP won just ten.

The report pointed out that the revival of ‘Mission 123’ became obvious in the last week of December itself. On December 24, the Prime Minister was in Odisha to inaugurate a new Indian Institute of Technology campus in Bhubaneswar, and then spoke at a rally in Khurda.

His next stop was Assam on December 25 for India’s longest rail-cum-road bridge over the Bramhaputra river. On January 4, he will be in Assam where the BJP has set a target of 11 out of 14 Lok Sabha seats — four more than its existing tally. On January 5, he will be back in Odisha for a rally in Mayurbhanj, and might return to the state on January 15 as well.

A party general secretary told the daily that the seven different fronts of the party would be reaching out to particular sets of voters, such as women, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and the youth. “Each front has been given a specific target,” the general secretary said.

A ‘Pehla vote Modi’ (first vote to Modi) campaign will take a pledge from first-time voters that their first vote would go to the PM. This will begin from January 12. Party President Amit Shah will address about 15,000 leaders of the party at the national council meeting in Delhi on January 11 and 12. This is the first time the party is organising its council meeting on such a large scale, with district-level workers also invited.

Meanwhile, the BJP’s West Bengal unit has planned a few rallies of the PM. The party had planned ‘Rath Yatras’ to touch all 42 constituencies in the state. However, it got stuck in legal battles after the state government denied permission. “We are hopeful that Prime Minister’s first rally will take place on January 29. We have sent the schedule to Delhi. Nothing has, however, been fixed so far,” state BJP chief Dilip Ghosh said.