The centre-ruling BJP has chalked out a new target for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in its objective of forming the government for the third consecutive time. Drawing an equation to win the seats that were narrowly got out of the party's hands in the 2019 polls, the BJP has come up with a plan to cover those 'weak' seats in the upcoming general elections. 

The plan to focus on these weak seats has been made in the meeting that was held on Wednesday in BJP's central headquarters in New Delhi. In the meeting that was chaired by BJP national president JP Nadda, the party has identified 160 seats across the country and brought them under the category of what it described as weak seats and said that it will focus on these 160 weak seats under the Lok Sabha Pravas Yojana.  

Lok Sabha Pravas Yojana was an initiative incepted by the BJP to win these weak seats as part of its Mission 2024. Under this initiative, the Union Ministers would visit these seats and would meet the local leaders with a view of strengthening the party's prospects of winning them in the 2024 general elections. Such visit under the initiative had happened earlier this year and in Wednesday's meeting, JP Nadda pressed about focusing on winning these weak seats. 

Wednesday's meeting had witnessed the presence of several senior party leaders and state convenors and they discussed about preparing a strategy and action plan for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. According to IANS, JP Nadda had urged the leaders to meet the people who are the beneficiaries of the government schemes in these weak seats and apprise them about the achievements of the Modi regime. 

On why these 160 seats, it was in these seats where BJP witnessed a debacle in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls at a very small margin and most of the BJP candidates in these seats ended up in the second and third spots. Foreseeing a good prospect to win these seats in the 2024 polls, the party is taking efforts to strengthen the base in these seats to accomplish its mission of winning over 300 seats in the Lok Sabha polls. 

In the meeting, JP Nadda had especially asked the leaders to reach out to every section of voters in these 160 seats to connect them with the BJP, meet influential and popular people of the area and propagate them about the achievements of the Modi administration. Nadda has said that the BJP should win most of these 160 seats in 2024 and increase the margin of victory. 

Earlier, the party had included 144 seats in the list of 'weak' seats and later it was increased to 160. These weak seats would be divided into clusters and Union Ministers and senior leaders would be conferred with key responsibilities to work in these weak seats. The New Indian Express quoted a senior leader, who attended the meeting, saying, "A detailed strategy on how to take the Modi government's works in the last nine years across all sections of the society was one of the prime issues discussed at length." 

"The feedback from Lok Sabha Pravas Yojana was also discussed. Party leaders have been asked to remain with the people", the senior leader added. Another leader said, "A new concept of clusters of Lok Sabha constituencies was discussed, under which senior leaders will make efforts to consolidate the party's electoral prospects." 

It has been reported that the BJP leaders will be conducting the Panchayat conferences first in the northern states of Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Rajasthan and the states in southern region will follow suit. Most of these weak seats are in the opposition ruling states including West Bengal and Kerala and the BJP's high-level summit has signalled that the party is rolling its sleeves for a big electoral fight in the general elections. As the BJP is beefing up its preparations, we can also expect that there might be a cabinet reshuffle at the centre where some Union Ministers would be removed from the cabinet and would be deputed for party works ahead of the polls.