Shah to put in place UP model of 'win one booth at a time' in state

BJP national president Amit Shah’s three-day visit to the state from Saturday will mark the beginning of drawing an ‘electoral master plan’ for poll-bound Karnataka.

The frequency of Shah’s visit will increase in the coming months. The plan is that Shah will visit most of the 224 Assembly constituencies in the state in phases to assess the grassroot political scene, poll prospects of the party and winnability of candidates.

The successful model adopted by Shah in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls of winning ‘one booth at a time’ will be put in place in Karnataka, a highly placed source in the state BJP told DH.

Shah is determined to win the Assembly polls in Karnataka by achieving its “Mission 150” target as part of the party’s larger goal of expanding its footprint in south India.

The meeting with party functionaries and various units lined up during Shah’s visit is to prepare the ground work to chalk out a meticulous plan - right from deciding on the BJP’s election strategy, distribution of tickets, to launching the party into the campaign mode. 

On the instruction of Shah, the state unit of the BJP launched the booth-level public reach out programme ‘Vistaarak yojana” a few weeks ago. “We have already  appointed booth level agents in 47,500 of 53,000 polling booths in the state.

Conventions have been held in jurisdiction of 33,000 polling booths. The Vistaarak programme has been a tremendous success,” BJP state general secretary N Ravi Kumar said.

Reach out programme
The party is of the opinion that the reach out programme played an integral part in the successful election campaign in Uttar Pradesh.

Soon after the Gujarat Assembly elections later this year, Shah plans to camp in the state and make personal visits to constituencies as he is of the view that only such trips can reveal the actual ground level scenario. An elaborate plan on these visits will be drawn up in the coming days.

Among other programmes during his three-day visit, the BJP chief will also review the party’s social media initiative of creating at least 5,000 WhatsApp groups in a bid to reach out to the electorate. The plan is to create at least 25 WhatsApp groups in each of the 224 Assembly constituencies. The groups will be segmented to cater to different section of the citizens.