The BJP’s two-day meeting of its office-bearers from across the country, held over Friday and Saturday, came up with micro-level plans aimed at increasing the party’s vote share in next year’s general election to over 50%, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi exhorting partymen to recognise that organisational preparedness is a must for this.
Chaired by BJP president J.P. Nadda, the meeting was attended by national office-bearers, morcha presidents and those in charge of particular States as well State-level generation secretaries of organisation, with the Prime Minister addressing the gathering on Friday and Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday. Plans by the BJP to reach out to at least 10 crore people by the time the Ram Temple in Ayodhya is inaugurated on January 22 was also discussed.
In a presentation made by BJP’s national general secretary Vinod Tawde, plans to increase the BJP’s vote share by 10% in the next election was discussed. Sources present at the meeting said the Prime Minister pointed out the need for his government’s programmes for the youth, the poor, women and farmers to be projected well. “He asked many questions on the details of how things are to be done and said that organisational strength was the key, as had been demonstrated in the recently held Assembly polls,” said a source present at the meeting.
The inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya figured in a big way in the meeting on Saturday, with plans to prepare a booklet on the BJP’s efforts at bringing this to pass and the Opposition’s role in “blocking” the same. Programmes for reaching out to households across the country will start from January 1. Senior leaders have been told that only those with invitations to the events be present in Ayodhya, and other leaders, to identify a temple in their areas and mark the occasion there.
With regard to community outreach, quite apart from this, Yadav and Jatav communities in Uttar Pradesh– the dominant communities among the OBCs and the Scheduled Castes respectively – are also to be reached out to.
“The Lok Sabha seats have been divided into clusters, where public meetings will be addressed by Mr. Modi, Mr. Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Mr. Nadda. Meetings of these clusters, starting from those for party workers to the general public, will start from January 15. Big meetings of new voters will be held from January 24. Organised by the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), these will number in thousands across the country,” said a source.
Online strategy
Aggressive communication on social media, as has been seen recently even from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s own handles on X (formerly twitter), has been advised. The BJP runs hundreds of call centres across the country for its outreach to beneficiaries of the Modi government’s welfare programmes and the BJP’s ideological projects, and the two-day meeting saw a detailed discussion on the processes being applied in these call centres.
The end of the Winter Session of Parliament, the last proper “working” session of both Houses before the Lok Sabha election, has been a signal to the BJP to get dug in, as far as poll preparations are concerned. The two-day meeting, and the many hours the leadership of the BJP spent over Friday and Saturday, shows that organisational suppleness was a prime concern.
