Shillong, April 13: The BJP today announced its ambitious "Mission 40" for the forthcoming polls to the Meghalaya Assembly.
The state has a 60-member Assembly and is scheduled to go to the polls in February-March next year.
While the BJP does not have a single legislator in the current Assembly, it is hoping that it would be able to dislodge the ruling Congress dispensation as part of its larger design of a "Congress- mukt Bharat" (Congress-Free India).
Addressing reporters here, BJP Lok Sabha MP Laxman Giluwa, who is also the state president of the party in Jharkhand, said the party is targeting to win in at least 40 constituencies. "We want to win in at least 40 constituencies in Meghalaya. This is our mission," Giluwa said.
However, the BJP leader did not rule out the possibility of tying up with regional parties either before or after the polls.
Nonetheless, he exuded confidence that the BJP, along with other parties, would form the government here in 2018.
He said party supporters are working hard to turn the dream of governing Meghalaya into a reality.
The BJP leader ruled out the possibility of projecting any state leader as the party's chief ministerial candidate.
Giluwa said it would be the party leadership which would decide on the chief ministerial face after the polls conclude.
In most of the states, which had gone to the polls since the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014, the party had in a majority of the cases refused to project any state leader as its face, but had been heavily relying on the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi had been the chief campaigner for the party in the state polls.
In the recently concluded state elections, including that of Uttar Pradesh, the BJP did not name any of its state leaders as the chief ministerial candidate. Stating that the BJP's agenda was for a "Congress- mukt Bharat", the Lok Sabha MP said, "Our mission is to make India a Congress-free country, and we are moving forward with it, and in the future, this dream will become a reality."
Earlier last month, state BJP president Shibun Lyngdoh expressed a desire that the party should go it alone in the polls although a few of the regional political parties in the state are part of the BJP-led North East Democratic Alliance (Neda).
