BJP president J.P. Nadda on Monday exhorted leaders to ensure the party wins all nine states going to polls in 2023 by taking lessons from Narendra Modi’s “mehnat” (hard work) in the recent Gujarat elections.

Minutes earlier, Modi stood on the footboard of a Range Rover to hold a 500m “grand roadshow” on Delhi’s Parliament Street as he arrived for the BJP’s national executive meeting.

The inaugural session addressed by Nadda was aimed at preparing the party for the state elections.

“Naddaji exhorted the party cadres to tighten their belts and ensure that the BJP doesn’t lose any of the upcoming Assembly polls. He said 2023 was an important year as elections would be held in nine states in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls,” former law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad quoted Nadda as having told the closed-door meeting.

Nadda, who is expecting the national executive to endorse an extension of his term as party chief till the 2024 polls, referred to the BJP’s victory in Gujarat and told the party leaders to take lessons from the way Modi led from the front and worked hard to impart an “extraordinary and historic” victory.

“The party president said that other states should emulate the work done by the Gujarat party and learn from Modiji’s hard work and leadership in the Gujarat elections,” Prasad said.

Nadda said that the party, on the directions of Modi, had identified 72,000 polling booths across the country where it was weak and has been running a tireless campaign to turn the tide.

The first day of the two-day national executive meeting was all about Modi, starting from the roadshow where flower petals were showered on him amid drum beating, dancing and chants of “Modi,Modi”, to Nadda’s inaugural address.

The political resolution slammed the Opposition for running a “negative campaign” against Modi and celebrated the favourable judgments by the Supreme Court in six cases.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who briefed reporters, said the six issues were the “Pegasus spyware case, the Rafale aircraft deal, money-laundering cases against Opposition leaders by the Enforcement Directorate, the Central Vista, reservation on economic grounds and demonetisation”.

“The country’s Opposition used these issues to run a negative campaign, using abusive language to belittle the PM. The issues went to the Supreme Court and the Opposition stood exposed,” Sitharaman said.

“This showed that PM Modi ka niyat saaf hai, non-corrupt image hai’ (Modi’s intentions were clean and his image is incorruptible),” she added.

Nadda said under Modi India had become the world’s fifth-largest economy, second-largest manufacturer of mobile phones and third-largest manufacturer in the auto sector.

Sitharaman spoke about how Modi had enhanced India’s image on the global stage.