BJP Parliamentary Meet Begins, PM Modi, Top Leaders Attend

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union ministers S Jaishankar, Amit Shah and Ashwani Vaishanaw were among other MPs who arrived on Thursday morning in Parliament to participate in a key Parliamentary party meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today. The meeting, the first by BJP during the current Winter Session comes amid suspense over the selection of Chief Ministers in three states - Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh where the party registered victories in Assembly polls. The meeting is being held at the Balayogi Auditorium in the Parliament House complex, ahead of the commencement of Day 4 of proceedings of the House.

#WATCH | BJP Parliamentary Party meeting gets underway in Delhi

The party won three of four states in the recently concluded assembly elections pic.twitter.com/Rg8UhjikOq — ANI (@ANI) December 7, 2023

BJP has the crucial task of selecting potential chief ministerial candidates to lead new cabinets for the upcoming five years. A BJP tsunami swept the Hindi heartland on the counting day for four states that polled for their assemblies last month with the party getting stunning mandates in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. It stumped not just their rivals but also some pollsters who had predicted tight races in these states. The election results in four states, especially the losses in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, came as a huge blow to the Congress's hopes for 2024 as it is now out of power across a vast swathe of the Hindi heartland.

The BJP, which had been battling close to 20 years of incumbency, won a resounding mandate bagging 163 seats while the Congress finished a distant second at 66 seats. In Rajasthan, the vote count painted a starkly different picture to what some of the pollsters had predicted, with the BJP poised to form the government, winning 115 seats, and the Congress trailing at 69 seats. Of the 90 assembly constituencies in Chhattisgarh, the BJP bagged 54 while the Congress won 35.