UP Polls: BJP looks to strengthen party at booth-level, asks heads to get 100 voters each

As it gears for a tight contest in Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party is centring its efforts from the booth level.

The booth will be the focal point of the party’s massive outreach in the upcoming elections in India’s largest state, said leaders in the know.

The party has deputed a member in each of the state’s 1.3 lakh booths. “There are anywhere between 900 to 1,000 voters in every booth. The booth committee president’s job is to bring in maximum votes for the party,” said a party functionary from the state involved in the efforts.

Apart from data collection and other activities, each booth president has also been deputed to get in 100 voters as party members to make the campaign a success, the functionary said.

The party’s decentralised organisational hierarchy has seen it through several elections, and the same will be up for the battleground in UP. The party has a position of panna pramukh, who is responsible for reaching out to over 48 households listed on a single page of the voter list.

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“Voter verification, strengthening the organisation at the booth level are part of the job of the panna pramukh,” said the functionary.

For Monday’s programme at the Kashi Vishwanath where the BJP is doing a show of strength, the booth committee presidents have been asked to go to various temples and view the live feed with people.

Party president J P Nadda, in his address during the party’s national executive in November, had said that while the party has committees in 85 per cent of the country’s 10.4 lakh booths, the deadline to finish the remaining 15 per cent was set at December 25 this year. He had also set a deadline for a panna pramukh for every page of the voter list by April 2022.

“The booth is the key to the party’s electoral campaigns. The motto is mera booth, sabse majboot,” said BJP spokesperson Gopal Krishna Agarwal.

The party functionary said that each booth committee has a three-rung hierarchy and there is an effort to have a representative from different sets of voters. “The booth prabhari (president) is usually from the community that the booth represents,” said the functionary.

In UP this week, Nadda addressed booth presidents two days in a row, in Meerut on Saturday and at Etah a day later, just weeks after home minister Amit Shah addressed a similar gathering. More such plans are in the pipeline.

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In Meerut, where 22,000 booth presidents turned up, UP CM Yogi Adityanath reiterated that the booth is the key to electoral success. “If we strengthen the BJP at booth-level, then the party will win more than 325 assembly seats in the state,” CM Yogi told a gathering of BJP booth presidents in Etah Sunday.

Nadda told the booth presidents that apart from taking the message of the promises made by the BJP government in the Centre and the state, they must also convey the work done by the party leadership and crores of workers during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Other than the electoral jobs, the booth presidents have also been asked to ensure sit-in sessions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s fortnightly radio programme, 'Mann Ki Baat'.

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