BJP MPs, Mins to listen to PM's speech amid rural folk

Union ministers, BJP MPs and office bearers will be amid the rural folk listening to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address on the Panchayati Raj Day in Jharkhand tomorrow when he is likely to flag his government's pro-village credentials.
They have been asked to listen to the address, to be broadcast live by Doordarshan, amidst villagers and their representatives and interact with them in what is being projected as a major drive by the party to reach out to rural India.
Party chief Amit Shah will interact with villagers in Ganoli, Ghaziabad.
There is a view in the party that while it continues to enjoy support in urban India, it needs to bolster efforts to build itself in rural areas.

Its Lok Sabha members, including ministers, will be in their constituencies, while the Rajya Sabha members will be present in different states, party spokesperson Anil Baluni said.
Uttar Pradesh, which goes to assembly polls early next year, has been given top priority with several union ministers belonging to the Upper House, including Arun Jaitley, Smriti Irani, Suresh Prabhu and Manohar Parrikar, likely to be spending the day there, party sources said.

Union ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad and Dharmendra Pradhan will be in Bihar.
Modi's speech will bring the curtains down on the 11-day 'Gram Uday se Bharat Uday' programme launched by the Prime Minister on Dalit icon B R Ambedkar's birth anniversary on April 14 from his birthplace Mhow in Madhya Pradesh.

"We may not have won many seats but have played
spoilsport for both alliance and TMC in many seats. The BJP can no longer be ignored in Bengal," said a senior BJP leader.
Much to the surprise of many political analysts who had predicted that BJP's vote share of 2014 would come down drastically and the Left Front-Congress alliance would benefit from it were proven wrong.
As BJP's vote share dropped from nearly 17.5 per cent in 2014 to 10.2 per cent this time, Trinamool Congress got the benefit in increasing its vote share by six per cent.
BJP has this time sealed the fate of 70 alliance candidates by eating into the opposition vote share and getting around 5,000 to 10,000 votes.

While decoding the reasons behind BJP's vote share playing a deciding factor, CPI(M) state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra had alleged "It's quite clear that BJP and TMC had an understanding. In some seats TMC has voted for BJP, while BJP voted for the TMC."
Another senior Left leader, on condition of anonymity, said, "At grassroots level those Congress and Left workers who didn't accept the alliance, either voted for NOTA or for the BJP, considering it to be a viable opposition to the TMC. That is why BJP has gained so much votes."
BJP national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh termed the Assembly election results as satisfactory and hoped it would be a launching pad for the party in Bengal.

"The results are satisfactory, but we could have done better. The victory in a seat like Baishnabnagar in Malda shows there can be consolidation against anti-national elements," Singh told