During the 15-minute meeting, Mr Sonowal thanked the prime minister for his support during the campaign of Assam Assembly elections, sources said.
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Sarbananda Sonowal He said the BJP MLAs would meet on May 22 and discuss the issue of the Legislature Party leader. “That will help the BJP pass these bills, provided it can develop a coalitional style of politics and reach out to these parties”, said Rajiv Kumar, an analyst at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.
BJP’s alliance partners, AGP and BPF, will meet the next day to elect Sonowal as the leader of the alliance, he said.
The BJP National Executive will meet in Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh on June 12-13, in a nod to the next political challenge it sees on its horizon, namely the Assembly polls in that State next year.
In 2012, Sonowal was appointed president of the state BJP -and there was no looking back since then.
He led the party to its best ever performance in Assam during 2014 Lok Sabha elections, when the party won seven seats. “The people wanted a change from what the Congress Govt. was offering”. In Kerala, it(Congress) lost because its government was mired in corruption scams, ” the Union Finance Minister said.
However, Joshi points out that although the BJP scored a win against a “weakened Congress” in Assam, it failed to gain a foothold in the southern states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, or make a significant mark in West Bengal, which are controlled by powerful regional parties.
The BJP, backed by two allies, crushed the Congress in many of its traditional bastions to script its maiden election victory in Assam and the northeast.
“The BJP defeated the Congress in Assam but couldn’t defeat Jayalalithaa, Mamata Banerjee or the Left. We will work towards finishing within that time frame the border sealing work, including the riverine border”, Sonowal told PTI in an interview.
He has also faced criticism from some of leaders who left the party including Himanta Biswa Sarma, who has been instrumental in BJP’s victory in Assam.
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The results are a major setback for Congress, which has worked with other opposition parties to block Prime Minister Modi’s economic reforms, notably the introduction of a nationwide tax on consumption, in the upper house of India’s Parliament.
