370 seats in Lok Sabha will be tribute to Syama Prasad Mookerjee: Modi at BJP national council meet

Setting clear targets for the BJP in the countdown to the elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Saturday that party workers should see a target of 370 Lok Sabha seats as their tribute to Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee, and not just as a number.

Mookerjee campaigned against Article 370, and demanded complete integration of Jammu and Kashmir with India. In August 2019, the Modi government ensured the abrogation of Article 370, ending the special status of J&K.

Addressing BJP office-bearers at the start of the two-day meeting of the party national council in New Delhi, Modi said each party worker should focus on his or her polling booth now, take the welfare measures and development work of the BJP government to the voters, and try to ensure that he or she gets 370 more votes than the last time for the party in his or her booth.

Briefing the press on the Prime Minister’s address to the office-bearers, BJP general secretary Vinod Tawde said Modi announced the “names” of Lok Sabha candidates of the party: “The lotus”. The message: party office-bearers and workers should look at just the party symbol, nothing else.

Later, addressing delegates of the national convention, BJP president J P Nadda said the party was the only one that had maintained the same ideological stand from 1951 to the present day.

He said the party saw victory the last time and will see victory in the future too.

Despite being very busy, Modi still gives priority to the party and constantly thinks how he can take the party to greater heights, Nadda said.

He praised party workers for making the party powerful at the grassroots.

He said that Jana Sangh and BJP saw the Emergency, struggles, electoral defeats, etc, but the last 10 years were a period