By IANS,
Mumbai : The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) national executive meeting here next week will be kept “simple” as Maharashtra is facing a severe drought, a senior party leader said Friday.
“Considering the fact that the state is facing a severe drought, we think it would be best to keep the national executive meeting simple,” Mumbai BJP president Raj Purohit told IANS.
Over 400 members are expected to participate in the meeting. They will include chief ministers, deputy chiefs of those states where the BJP is an alliance partner and all the city and state presidents of the party.
“The leaders will be accommodated in state guest houses and regular hotels, instead of five-star hotels. Normal Maharashtrian food will be served to the delegates for these two days. There is a general opinion that austerity measures should be adopted for this meet,” Purohit said.
Purohit said that 23 teams of BJP’s Mumbai members have been formed to organise the meeting. “Invitations for the national executive meet were sent to all chief ministers and we expect them to attend. We are making all arrangements for the meet,” he said.
Top leaders L.K. Advani, Nitin Gadkari and Sushma Swaraj will reach Mumbai May 23. The national executive meeting will be held May 23 and a public meeting will be held May 25.
Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Gopinath Munde, Nitin Gadkari and Rajnath Singh will be present for the public meeting. However, the chief ministers will not be present at the public meeting, he said.
Meanwhile, a 25-member delegation of BJP leaders Friday met Maharashtra Governor K. Sankaranarayanan and demanded the convening of a special session of the state legislature to discuss the drought situation in Maharashtra.
State BJP president Sudhir Mungantiwar, who led the delegation, alleged discrimination by the state government in the selection of 15 talukas affected by drought, and demanded that other talukas affected by drought should also be included in the list for allocation of special funds.
Sankaranarayanan assured the delegation that he would discuss the issue with Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan.