The BJP’s top leadership will meet for a two-day strategy session later this month in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan that has been scarred by communal clashes recently, amid indications that the saffron camp may be sharpening its aggressive Hindutva card with an eye on the upcoming state elections.

The meeting is also being seen as an effort to take on the state’s ruling Congress, scheduled to hold a three-day “chintan shivir” (brainstorming session) in Udaipur next week (May 13-15) to discuss the current political situation and the party’s slide.

The BJP meeting, to be chaired by its president J.P. Nadda, is scheduled for May 20-21 in Jaipur and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to address the gathering online from Delhi, party sources said. All national office-bearers, including state unit chiefs and key organisational leaders, will be present.

The selection of the venue, Congress-ruled Rajasthan that is scheduled to go to polls next year, holds significance against the backdrop of the BJP’s overdrive against the Ashok Gehlot government over communal incidents in the state. The BJP has been accusing the Congress government of appeasement politics.

The BJP session and the venue, party insiders said, was hurriedly finalised to give a “fitting counter” to the meeting of the top Congress leadership in a state that is among the very few the Grand Old Party now rules on its own.

The BJP leaders said that apart from strategising for the year-end Assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh and next year’s polls in Karnataka, Tripura, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the meeting would take stock of the political situation in the country and pass resolutions to stress the party’s stand.

The BJP’s meet comes on the heels of sectarian clashes in states such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Delhi during the recent Ram Navami, Hanuman Jayanti and Id celebrations, along with the hijab row in Karnataka.

In BJP-ruled states such as Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat and in Delhi, where the party runs the municipal corporations, the administration responded with brute force by using bulldozers to demolish the alleged illegal properties of the “rioters”.

While Modi has maintained silence on the apparent targeting of Muslims, BJP chief Nadda has responded aggressively by terming the Opposition “rejected and dejected”. It was in response to a joint statement by Opposition parties expressing concern over systematic bursts of communal violence across states and highlighting the Prime Minister’s silence that they alleged amounted to “official patronage”.

Given the way communal violence has erupted across states and the ruling leadership’s hostile posturing, it has become clear that the BJP is eyeing to use polarisation as an electoral weapon to divert the people’s attention from rising unemployment and prices of essential commodities.