It's 'mission 75' for BJP in Haryana polls, says Manohar Lal Khattar

Chandigarh: After its prodigious performance of winning in all the 10 Lok Sabha constituencies in Haryana, the BJP is drawing up a strategy to bag at least 75 seats in the Assembly elections which is just a few months away.

The “Mission 75”, as Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar put it, aims at improving the saffron party’s tally in the 90-member Haryana Assembly where it now has 48 MLAs following its victory in the Jind bypoll earlier this year.

He told this to reporters in the national capital after a BJP meeting which was presided by party chief and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Party sources said Shah held separate meetings with leaders from Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana, all of which would go to polls later this year. The BJP is in power in all the three states and their chief ministers also attended the exercise.

The results of the Lok Sabha polls on all 10 seats in Haryana and the strategy for assembly polls was discussed in the meeting, Khattar said. Exuding confidence that the BJP will win the state election with an overwhelming majority, he said the party has already started to gear up for the poll due in October.

In an obvious reference to the Haryana Congress ridden by factionalism and another opposition party the INLD, which witnessed a vertical split last year following a feud in the Chautal family, the chief minister said, “Those who cannot take their own team along, how will they run the state.”

“In the past four-and-a-half years, we have seen how people have backed our development-oriented policies and programmes. Be it the results of the Faridabad and Gurugram civic polls, the recent mayoral elections in five cities, the Jind bypoll and the Lok Sabha polls, people have reposed their faith in the BJP,” Khattar said. “Every section of society is satisfied with our work.”

On the seat-sharing issue with the Shiromani Akali Dal, which has expressed its desire to jointly contest the Haryana elections along with the saffron party, the chief minister said these things will be decided by the BJP’s parliamentary board at an appropriate time.

Khattar also informed reporters that on the occasion of International Yoga Day on June 21, Amit Shah will be present at a programme in Rohtak where around 21,000 people are expected to participate.

At the meeting in the BJP headquarters, Union Ministers Rao Inderjit Singh, Krishan Pal Gurjar and Rattan Lal Kataria, Haryana Ministers Ram Bilas Sharma, Abhimanyu, O P Dhankar, state BJP chief Subhash Barala and former Union Minister Birender Singh were also present.