Gandhinagar:
After a meeting of the BJP's top leadership on Thursday that endorsed
Narendra Modi as the party's key strategist, it's action time now for the Gujarat Chief Minister. Mr Modi, who heads the party's election campaign committee, will address about 1,500 party leaders and workers in Bihar in a teleconference this evening.
His choice of Bihar as the launch pad of his election gameplan is significant. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had projected Mr Modi's elevation as the BJP's poll campaign chief to sever his party's nearly two-decade-long ties with the latter. Mr Kumar is from the Janata Dal (United) or JD(U) which was, till last month, running a coalition government in Bihar with the BJP.
With general elections less than a year away, the agenda of Mr Modi's interaction will focus on the party's election strategy. The 1,500-strong audience for Mr Modi's address will be divided into three groups. The first group will comprise state working committee members and district party office bearers. The second group will comprise district and block level presidents and the last group will have party workers from the grassroots level and as well as from social organisations.
Later this month, the Gujarat Chief Minister will visit Odisha and at the beginning of August, will travel to Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh.
Mr Modi's move to kickstart his poll strategy process from Bihar is also bound to provide a massive boost to the morale of the state's party unit which had strongly rallied behind the Gujarat Chief Minister - first, during his huge and controversial promotion at the BJP's national executive meet Goa in June and later, during the public battle and subsequent fallout with Nitish Kumar's party.
For months, Mr Kumar and his JD(U) had derided Mr Modi, always without naming him, for being a divisive leader and failing to check the riots in Gujarat in 2002 in which hundreds of Muslims were killed. Prior to their break-up, the JD(U) had, for years, also banned Mr Modi from campaigning in Bihar, a writ the BJP had accepted.