By IANS,
New Delhi : Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari has called a meeting of party office-bearers from Uttar Pradesh later this month to prepare a plan for the party’s revival in the state where it has witnessed a downslide in the past few elections.
The meeting is expected to be held in the third week of January. The place of the meet has not yet been decided, according to party sources.
Gadkari has decided to concentrate on Uttar Pradesh to improve the party’s performance in the 2012 assembly polls, sources said.
The BJP finished a distant fourth in Uttar Pradesh in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, winning 10 seats. In the 2007 assembly polls, it won 51 seats.
Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi is also focusing on Uttar Pradesh and is personally leading his party’s efforts to come to power in the country’s most populous state which sends 80 members to the Lok Sabha.
The Congress showed a marked improvement in its performance in the state in the last Lok Sabha polls by winning 21 seats.
BJP sources said assembly polls in Bihar later this year and Uttar Pradesh in 2012 will serve as chances for the new president to prove his mettle. They said the challenge is more severe in Uttar Pradesh as the party’s plans for revival in the past have come unstuck.
They said Gadkari has plans to visit the state this month.
He will also start touring other states after his formal ratification as president at the party’s national council meeting next month.