BJP's Punjab core group holds strategy meet for assembly polls, discusses farm laws, alliances

New Delhi [India], September 14 : BJP's core group for Punjab held a meeting here on Tuesday to finalise the strategy for state assembly polls.
The meeting was presided over by general secretary ( organisation) BL Santhosh and was attended by party's Punjab in-charge Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, general secretaries Dushyant Gautam and Tarun Chugh besides leaders from the state.
Sources said the party leaders discussed the issue of farmers' protest over three agriculture laws which is causing problems for the state unit and measures to counter "false propaganda by the opposition against three laws".
With Punjab being a key agricultural state, the issue of central farm laws is expected to dominate the political discourse.
Sources said that probable alliance partners in Punjab before and after the polls were also brought up by the state leadership during the meeting. Shiromani Akali Dal, one of the oldest allies of BJP in the National Democratic Alliance, had quit the alliance last year over the farm laws.
Sources said the state BJP is trying to focus on welfare schemes of the central government that have benefitted the state. Armed with statistics of welfare schemes for the state, BJP is likely to focus its energy on maximising the impact of these schemes.
Punjab is the only state, among five states that will go to the polls early next year, where BJP is not in power.
The party is hoping to do well in the assembly polls but faces an uphill task in the battle that includes the ruling Congress, Aam Aadmi Party and SAD-BSP combine.