As Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday reached Gujarat, the BJP headquarters in New Delhi saw back-to-back meetings to finalise the election strategy. The Election Commission is likely to announce the dates for the Lok Sabha election 2024 after March 13 and now EC teams are on their state visits to review the poll preparedness. BJP chief JP Nadda chaired a meeting of party leaders who have been made in-charge of different states and took a report on how the campaign preparations are going.

Baijayant Panda (UP), Dushyant Gautam (Uttrakhand), Tarun Chugh (J&K), Vinod Tawade (Bihar), and Biplab Deb (Haryana) attended Saturday’s meeting.

Nadda and Union home minister Amit Shah held a separate meeting with Uttar Pradesh leaders which was attended by chief minister Yogi Adityanath. Samajwadi Party and the Congress will fight together from Uttar Pradesh and they have already announced their seat-sharing deal — Congress 17 and Samajwadi Party 63. In 2019, the BJP won 62 of the 80 seats in the state.

The meeting of the BJP’s central election committee will be held soon following which the BJP will start issuing the list of candidates.

Target 370

The BJP is targeting 370 seats alone and over 400 seats for the NDA in the upcoming Lok Sabha election. In 2019, the BJP won 303 seats out of the 436 that it fought.

At a rally in Madhya Pradesh, PM Modi recently spelt out the ‘magic formula’ of how to achieve 370 seats. He said the BJP booth workers will have to ensure that an additional 370 votes are polled in each booth and that’s how BJP will reach 370 seats.

Target 370 was the main agenda of the meetings held on Saturday apart from drawing plans to explore ways to boost the party’s prospects where the BJP is weak. The in-charges were asked to give reports on development projects implemented in their regions.