Ahead of the Maharashtra assembly elections, the BJP has started preparations for the state with the party’s election in-charge and Union minister Bhupender Yadav spending more time in the state to figure out the party’s strategy for the upcoming elections.
In the run-up to the campaign, the party is working on a seat-to-seat contest strategy where every candidate would be decided based on the political equation in the given seat while central leaders will campaign to build a universal narrative to the campaign.
The major question is leadership. In 2019, the BJP contested the assembly election in alliance with Shiv Sena. Post the election, the alliance broke on the issue of leadership. At present, Eknath Shinde of Shiv Sena is the chief minister while BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis is the deputy chief minister. Leaders from the state told ET that though the party is projecting the joint leadership of Shinde, Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar for the assembly elections, Fadnavis seems to be the face within the cadre. The party has started emphasising on this with posters of Fadnavis in the centre along with the names of government schemes. This is being done to keep the party cadre in good humour as they want BJP to lead the government in the state.
Apart from leading the party campaign, Fadnavis is also talking to alliance partners for seat sharing and looking at possible candidates from different seats.
The BJP is banking a lot on union ministers Bhupender Yadav and Ashwini Vaishnav as election in-charge and co-in-charge of the state. The duo successfully delivered the MP assembly elections, turning around the public perception in the state.
Deployment of senior leaders from other states have already started and the leaders have taken charge of the respective areas.
Senior BJP leader and minister in MP, Kailash Vijayvargiya has been given Nagpur region. Apart from Vijayvargiya, another state minister Prahlad Patel has been given charge of Yavatmal Wardha. Narottam Mishra, another party leader from MP has been given the charge of Bhandara-Gondiya. Senior BJP leader CT Ravi has already started working in Pune and Western Maharashtra region. BJP national secretary Arvind Menon has been given the charge of Sambhajinagar while Gujarat BJP MLA Amit Thaker has been deployed in Nashik region. BJP leader Anil Jain has been roped in for Ahmednagar district.
