Have to win all 9 state polls in 2023: Nadda at BJP national executive

BJP president J P Nadda on Monday underlined the importance of the nine state assembly polls to be held this year in the run up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, and asked the party's national executive to ensure it does not lose in any state.

Briefing reporters on Nadda's address to the key BJP body, whose two-day meeting began here on Monday, party leader and former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the party president noted that the ongoing year was very important in the prelude to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

The ruling party has been putting in place a number of exercises to strengthen its organisation to ensure that it comes back to power in 2024 at the Centre for a third term.

Nadda, in his closed-door address, lauded India's progress under the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government.

It has become the world's fifth-largest economy, second-largest manufacturer of mobile phones, third-largest manufacturer in the auto sector while the highway being built every day has risen to 37 km from 12 km earlier, the party president said.

The country has also worked to empower the poor with a number of welfare schemes, including that of free grains, he added.

Nadda praised the party's win in the recent Gujarat assembly polls as "extraordinary and historic", saying winning more than 150 seats in the 182-member assembly is a great achievement.

While the party lost in Himachal Pradesh to the Congress, the vote gap between the two parties was less than one per cent, he said.