BJP breaks away from tradition, to hold parliamentary meet at new Deendayal Upadhyay Marg headquarters

Breaking away from tradition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will hold its parliamentary party meeting at its new headquarters at Deendayal Upadhyay Marg in New Delhi on Friday. This is a departure from the past practice of holding the meeting every Tuesday at the Parliament’s library building or the Parliament Annexe. The meeting in the evening will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah. All the 332 BJP MPs from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are expected to attend the meeting, including the Union ministers, and it will be followed by a dinner. [caption id=“attachment_4401501” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] The BJP has recently shifted its headquarters from the postcolonial Lutyens’ Delhi bungalow at 11 Ashoka Road to the swanky three-storied building at 6A, Deendayal Upadhyay Marg. “It’s a routine parliamentary party meeting. The only change is the venue. The basic objective of holding this meeting at our new office is to give the feel of this new headquarters to all the MPs, including the new ones. Discussions will also be the same as we do every Tuesday at the Parliament’s Library building or Annexe. It’s a routine affair,” a BJP MP told Firstpost. Importance of the meeting Though this parliamentary party meeting has been stated to be a ‘routine affair’, according to sources, it will be an important one due to a couple of reasons. The Parliament has been witnessing a deadlock ever since the second phase of the Budget Session began on 5 March, due to relentless protests by Opposition parties besides NDA ally Telugu Desam Party. The ruckus inside both the Houses of the Parliament has led to daily adjournments without any serious business transactions. The prime minister is expected to discuss strategy on this with his party MPs. The current session ends on 6 April. The meeting will be the first one since the BJP lost three Lok Sabha seats in the recently held bypolls in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, including UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s constituency Gorakhpur — a strong BJP bastion. This will be an introspection session. Modi-Shah will discuss and give instructions on how the MPs should function in their respective constituencies ahead of the upcoming Assembly elections in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, and subsequently in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. “The prime minister may ask the MPs to tell the public about the benefits of government schemes, especially when the Opposition has been trying to attack the government,” a senior BJP functionary said. The Congress during its steering committee meeting had chalked out the strategy to attack the Modi government, both inside and outside the Parliament. Inside the Parliament, it is constantly attacking the NDA through floor coordination. TDP is also up in arms against the NDA government and it recently quit the alliance. Given the situation, the Friday evening meeting becomes much more important in terms of strategy on how the BJP would combat all these challenges.