By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, April 14, 2017 : The Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] has set its eye on unconquered territories, Odisha being one of them, to win the 2019 Lok Sabha election. The party will chalk out a strategy to garner popular support in states such as West Bengal, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

BJP president Amit Shah couldn’t have found a better occasion to land in Bhubaneshwar to take his self-avowed “look east” policy a step forward. It’s one of the rare occasions when a party holds the meeting of the party National Executive – its highest policy making body after a gap of 20 years here beginning on Saturday.

The party has not yet succeeded to grab power in the east despite a steady increase in its vote share. On landing at Bhubaneswar airport on Friday, Amit Shah was given two garlands made of lotuses, the party symbol.  One had 21 flowers, to symbolise the parliamentary seats in Odisha, and the other had 147, the number of assembly seats.

Shah then proceeded towards AG Square amid tight security, where he paid floral tributes to Indian Constitution’s founding father Bhimrao Ambedkar on his 126th birth anniversary.

He also joined Odia New Year celebrations at the state BJP headquarters in the evening.

Interestingly the party also named the venue of its national executive meeting here after the dalit poet Bhima Bhoi apparently to woo dalits who comprise over 17 per cent of Odisha’s population.

“The national executive meeting venue has been named after revolutionary poet Bhima Bhoi. The saint poet had unique ideology which is being followed by crores of people in Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand,” Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said inaugurating the media centre set up for BJP’s national executive at a hotel here.

Pradhan said the dalit saint poet was blind since birth but wrote a number of revolutionary poems and his ideology has been appreciated by the United Nations. “Bhima Bhoi was also a social reformer and symbol of brotherhood and respected by people, mostly poor,” Pradhan said.

Of the 147 assembly segments in Odisha, 23 seats are reserved for scheduled caste candidates while three of its 21 Lok Sabha seats are allotted to the dalit community.

BJP had won only two SC seats in the assembly and none of the three LS seats allotted to the community.

The party now focuses on dalit votes which traditionally belonged to Congress but has now slipped into hands of the BJD.

The dalit population in the state is 71,48,463 according to the 2011 census.