BJP’s massive outreach campaign eye SC/ST vote banks

With an aim to consolidate the tribal votes ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP is carrying out a massive outreach campaign among the community, reaching out to as many as 75 lakh tribal families.

The party’s Scheduled Tribe Morcha said the outreach is part of the Jan Sampark Abhiyaan, undertaken by the BJP to celebrate nine years of the Narendra Modi government, and will be completed by the end of this month.

The tribal families will be given pamphlets, leaflets and books about the schemes of the Modi government that have benefitted them. BJP ST Morcha president Samir Oraon said, among the schemes about which the Morcha will speak to these families are the Ujjwala scheme, PM Samman Nidhi, PM Awas, PM Sinchai, Jan Dhan and Mudra schemes.

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“People from the tribal community tend to suffer from diseases like sickle cell disease and thalassemia; we’ll tell them how to stay away from them. We are also telling them about how the BJP government came forward during Covid, providing ration to over 80 crore people,” Oraon told DH.

Most importantly, the party’s aim is to add all 75 lakh families to the SARAL app, or the Sang than Reporting and Analysis platform, on which the BJP is digitising its entire organisational operations, as well as connecting its key voters. As part of this outreach, party president JP Nadda travelled to Giridih in Jharkhand on Thursday, where he held a ‘sampark’ meet and addressed a meeting.

The party has also intensified its efforts in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, where the party is carrying out a six-day Rani Durgavati Gaurav Yatra, with Union Home Minister Amit Shah slated to be a part of it.

On June 27, Modi is set to make a trip to Shahdol where he will interact with the tribal community, and self-help groups of tribal women in Parkiya village, and dine with tribal women at a sickle cell eradication event. The state’s 45 tribal seats are crucial for the BJP; they won only 16 in 2018.

As part of the ‘Jan Sampark Abhiyaan, the Morcha is also carrying out ‘rath yatras’ in over 200 districts as part of the campaign. “In over 451 districts on June 9, which is the death anniversary of tribal freedom fighter Birsa Munda, Morcha workers observed Birsa Balidan Diwas,” Oraon said.

The BJP is keen on winning the votes of tribal and backward classes in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls since 161 seats – a third of all the Lok Sabha seats – are reserved seats. Among them, 47 seats have been reserved for the Scheduled Tribes, and 84 for Scheduled Castes.

In 2019, BJP won 31 of the 47 ST seats, bettering its tally of the 2014 LS elections when it won 27 seats. Last year, the BJP government expanded the Scheduled Tribe list from 735 to 750, adding tribes from Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh to the list.