New Delhi: Uttarakhand may not rank high among states in terms of political weight, but it holds enough importance in the BJP’s plan for its president Nitin Nabin to spend three days with booth-level members, MPs and MLAs and brainstorm on winning back the seats the party lost by narrow margins in 2022.While assembly elections in the hill state are due early next year, still two years away in Karnataka where he was recently for two days, he stressed the need to present a united face to the state unit of the party, which has a history of internal strife. Nabin combined his efforts to unite the ranks, such as addressing intellectuals, to connect with important constituencies.Elections or not, the BJP is always preparing for the next round of elections: strengthening its much-awaited organizational machinery, reaching out to people and tailoring its message, while its rivals often seem quick to spring into action closer to the formal announcement of the elections.The next round of assembly elections in five states – UP, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa – is nine to 10 months away, but the BJP is taking steps to outwit its rivals and get an early start.The BJP is in power in all these states except Punjab, where it is investing a lot of political capital to emerge as a strong force after playing second fiddle to former ally Akali Dal for more than two decades until the 2020 split.If the December appointment of Pankaj Chaudhary, a backward class Kurmi who defected largely from the BJP to the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance in the Lok Sabha elections, was seen as part of its political strategy to win back lost territory in 2024, the ruling party is expected to continue taking steps to counter the SP’s PDA (backward-dalit-minority) pitch in the coming days.