BJP’s OBC Morcha meets in Jodhpur with eye on potential vote bank

Pasmanda Muslims and Congress leader Ashok Gehlot would be high on the agenda for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Other Backward Class Morcha meet, which convened in the Rajasthan chief minister’s turf, Jodhpur, on Thursday.

Members of the Morcha would brainstorm about the ways to attract OBCs from within the Muslim community, such as the Pasmanda Muslims, ahead of the 2024 elections. Union Home Minister Amit Shah is set to attend the meet on its concluding day on Saturday.

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To counter Gehlot who hails from the Mali caste, which is categorised as an OBC, the BJP would hold a three-day national executive of its OBC Morcha in Gehlot’s bastion. Gehlot started his political career in 1977 from Jodhpur’s Sardarpura, and currently represents the constituency in the Assembly.

National executive members of the Morcha have been tasked with a 24-hour ‘pravas’ across 47 mandals of the Assembly constituency, so that they can spend a night in these mandals to spread awareness of the Modi government’s schemes.

Apart from that, party leaders will also work on ways to consolidate the OBC vote bank in election-bound states like Karnataka, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh, besides Rajasthan. Representatives of the Morcha from these states will lay out ways to woo the OBC voters.

A political resolution will also be passed at the meet, which will present a strategy to gather OBC voters for the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The three-day event will be attended by several BJP leaders including Bhupendra Yadav, Arun Singh, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Kailash Chaudhary, and state president Satish Poonia.

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“A roadmap to strengthening the OBC Morcha and reaching out to OBC voters in states where the BJP is not in power are some of the key points in the agenda,” said MP K Laxman, national president of the OBC Morcha.

Laxman said that the Morcha will ask for constitutional status to the National Commission For Backward Classes and a chargesheet of Congress’s overlooking of OBC issues will also be worked out, he said.