Watch Nidhi Razdan: BJP's message to Congress - No more business as usual in state elections - video Dailymotion

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00:00In what can be considered both a bold and a risky electoral strategy, the BJP this time

00:09has decided to field a large number of MPs for the upcoming state elections in five states,

00:15particularly in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. This includes as many as four

00:20union ministers until now. They seem to have a couple of goals and a couple of reasons

00:25why they want to do this. One is to show their seriousness about these state elections. Remember,

00:30these are happening just on the eve of the Lok Sabha polls next year. And the party wants

00:34to tell voters that we're taking it seriously. We've got political heavyweights out there,

00:38not just local leaders, but national leaders who are going to take your issues seriously.

00:44The second thing it does for the BJP is that given how crucial next year's Lok Sabha election

00:48is where the party is seeking a third straight term, this gives them the room to drop certain

00:54MPs to bring in new faces, especially on the seats of those who may go on to win state elections.

01:00The third thing that it's really doing is also trying to quell a lot of the factionalism that

01:05the party faces in these states. So they're looking at alternatives to leaders like Vasundhara Raji

01:11in Rajasthan or to Shivraj Chauhan in Madhya Pradesh or to Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh, all

01:16big BJP leaders in their own way in their states, but who are now currently being sidelined by the

01:22central leadership. But it is hugely risky as well. It also shows the congressification in a

01:27way of the BJP, which is now very much a high command party where central leaders are deciding

01:33minutiae of electoral strategy, even at the state level. That doesn't necessarily work well all the

01:40time. The Congress has learned that the hard way, but it'll be interesting to see whether it works

01:45for the BJP simply because the party hasn't had the kind of electoral successes at the state level

01:50that it has had at the national level. The contest for 2024 continues to get more interesting.