BJP picks up the threads, needs to set course ahead of 2019 Lok Sabha polls

With only months left for the Lok Sabha battle, the party needs to set its course: Whether vikas over Hindutva, and to rely on leadership alone

When the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) national council congregates in Delhi on January 11 and 12 for the last marathon sitting before the Lok Sabha election, more than an anodyne pep talk from the brass, members will look to dissipate the cloud of ambivalence over important issues. 

They will seek clarity on matters that have concerned them since the party lost the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh elections, which a senior functionary underplayed as a “setback but not so severe that we cannot overcome”.  Others weren’t upbeat. “The loss was a bigger blow than we had imagined,” said a party source.