AP on top agenda of BJP national council meeting

New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to lay down the BJP's agenda for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls at a two-day meeting of its national council, which will begin from Saturday and be attended by nearly 11,500 party members, from elected panchayat heads to party district presidents and Union ministers.

Party president J P Nadda will inaugurate the meeting and Modi on Sunday will deliver the valedictory address, a speech which is likely to draw the broader contours of the BJP's campaign and exhort its members to go all out to achieve his target for the party to win 370 seats in the elections.

The meeting, which will be held at the Bharat Mandapam, is going to be the biggest gathering of BJP delegates from across the country in recent memory, with some leaders recalling the gigantic plenary organised in Mumbai by the party in 1995 in which tens of thousands of its members had participated.

According to party sources, apart from giving a direction to the rank and file on how to win 370 seats on its own, the national executive will also deliberate on expansion of the NDA and taking back some of those who had left the NDA in the past which includes the Telugu Desam.

All the state leaders of BJP from Andhra Pradesh have reached Delhi and had preliminary meetings with the party top leadership. They are learnt to have submitted a report to the party high command suggesting that it should ask for 15 Assembly seats and seven Lok Sabha seats in the ensuing elections in Andhra Pradesh.

It may be recalled that recently TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu had met Union Home Minister Amit Shah and held long discussion with him and has agreed to rejoin the NDA.

It is learnt that Naidu and Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan would together come to Delhi after February 20 and discuss the issue of seat sharing. Once the deal is through, a common list of candidates would be announced either towards the end of February or first week of March.