Shah asks BJP''s southern units to prepare for 2019 General Election

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

Kozhikode, September 25

Bharatiya Janata Party national president Amit Shah has asked his party’s units to strengthen the party at its weakest points — the mostly elusive South — before the next General Election.

With two-and-a-half years to go for the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Shah has told his party leadership to have a list of its most promising candidates who will stand the party’s big test in 2019. The message is particularly meant for three states — Karnataka, where the BJP last had a government until May 2013, and the two elusive states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.   

Although the three states together account for 87 seats in Parliament, they elected only 18 BJP members in 2014. In Kerala, which dominated by the bipolar politics of Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led left and Congress-led United Democratic Front, it drew a naught.

But a seat in the Assembly election earlier this year and a substantial headway in vote share has made Shah confident of doing better in the next general election.  

A consolidation of Hindu votes in NDA’ favour lost Congress’s UDF as many as 26 seats in the state, party leaders say, although the increase in vote share from a 6.3 per cent in 2011 to close to 16 per cent this year primarily benefited the CPI (M)-led Left Democratic Front.

It is this that Shah intends to turn in the BJP’s favour. 

And although the BJP may still not be able to target the CPI (M)’s stronghold — the northern parts of Kerala — the sources say the aim is to emerge as a strong opposition and an alternative to the Congress-led UDF.