The Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday said the meeting of its Central Election Committee (CEC), which was scheduled to be held over two days, on September 30 and October 1, will now be held on a single day on October 1, as reported by the news agency ANI, citing party sources.
At the meeting, the BJP is likely to make key decisions pertaining to the upcoming state assembly elections in five states. The meeting will largely deliberate on the upcoming state elections in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, ANI reported. The polls are scheduled to be held towards the end of this year.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and several other Union ministers, besides party chief JP Nadda, are among the members of the apex committee that takes the final call on the candidates. CEC had discussed candidates for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in the two earlier meetings.
The BJP has so far named 79 candidates for the polls to the 230-member Madhya Pradesh assembly and 21 for the elections to the 90-member House in Chhattisgarh.
The saffron party fielded three Union ministers, besides four other MPs, as candidates for the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls. Assembly polls are also due in Telangana and Mizoram.
Of these five states, the BJP is in power only in Madhya Pradesh while the Congress holds the reins in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. The BRS is in power in Telangana and the Mizo National Front in Mizoram. Shah and Nadda met Rajasthan leaders in Jaipur on Wednesday to finalise the party's strategy and spell out the leadership's agenda for the campaign.
The Election Commission is likely to set the electoral process formally rolling in all five states in the first half of October. The elections are likely to be held in November-December.