PM Modi meets CMs of BJP ruled states | Latest News India

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday held a meeting with chief ministers and deputy chief ministers of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states, with people aware of the details saying the deliberations emphasized the need to sharpen coordination between the government and the party and to ensure the implementation of all central and state schemes on “mission mode”.

The prime minister is also learned to have spoken about the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections and said the June 4 poll results should not “demoralize” the party leaders. Underlining the need for adherence to principles of good governance, Modi said states to learn from each other’s best practices, the people said.

Though the BJP fell short of a clear majority, it formed the government at Center for a third consecutive time with the support from its partners in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The ongoing two-day meeting is the first extensive gathering of 13 CMs, 15 deputy CMs and the BJP top brass after the Lok Sabha polls, which saw the party’s tally shrink from 303 in 2019 to 240.

A person aware of the details said the meeting took stock of issues that impacted the electoral outcome, such as schisms in the party’s state units, incongruity between some of state governments and party units, and poor implementation of flagship schemes.

“The need to sharpen coordination between the government and the party units has been underlined. Given the discord in some of the states between the CM and Deputies, the leadership wants such disagreements to be ironed out and has asked for better working ties between the CM and the ministers,” the person said, requesting anonymity.

Differences between top leadership and the party’s state unit have been conspicuous in Uttar Pradesh, where CM Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Maurya are reported at loggerheads and have made public their disagreements. With bypolls in the state expected soon, the central leadership held meetings with both leaders as well as the state president to ensure the party’s performance is not adversely affected.

The BJP’s poor show in UP, where its tally came down from 62 seats in 2019 to 33 in the recent general elections, is considered a key reason for the party’s overall dip.

In several other states as well, friction and lack of cohesion among leaders have been flagged. Some deputy CMs had conveyed that they are not given work commensurate with their experience and stature, the person quoted above said.

On Sunday, the CMs will present reports about their states, which will include details about the status of flagship programs such as PM Awas Yojana, PM SVANidhi, welfare projects of the state, as well as good practices and initiatives in social, environmental and governance that can be replicated.

Adityanath made a presentation on Gram Sachivalaya or village secretariat on Saturday while his Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma gave a presentation on Rojgar Sangam Yojana, a state scheme to tackle unemployment. Bihar’s presentation was on how illegal mining has been stopped in the state while Tripura gave an account of government at the doorstep initiative, the person said.

The first day of the meeting was also attended by Union home minister Amit Shah, BJP president and Union minister JP Nadda, party general secretary (organization) BL Santhosh and several other senior leaders.

Besides Adityanath and Sarma, other BJP chief ministers present at the meeting included Mohan Yadav (Madhya Pradesh), Bhajanlal Sharma (Rajasthan), Vishnu Deo Sai (Chhattisgarh), Pushkar Singh Dhami (Uttarakhand) and newly elected Odisha CM Mohan Charan Majhi. Deputy CMs present included Devendra Fadnavis (Maharashtra), Y Patton (Nagaland), and Vijay Kumar Sinha and Samrat Choudhary — both from Bihar.