New Delhi: Battling anti-incumbency and a resurgent Congress in the upcoming Rajasthan Assembly elections, the BJP has decided to go back to its strength — effective booth management. Taking forward the party’s strategy of appointing a ‘page pramukh’ to ensure last-mile coverage during the campaign, the BJP in Rajasthan has decided to appoint ‘half-page pramukhs’.
Explaining the original ‘page pramukh’ strategy, a Gujarat BJP leader told News18, "Every constituency has several booths and every polling booth has its voter lists. These voter lists run into several pages and each page has names of 20-30 voters. The idea is to take one of the people on every page of the voter lists and appoint them as the BJP's page pramukh."
The responsibility of the ‘page pramukh’, another BJP leader said, is to ensure that they’re in touch with every single voter on their page and spread the party's message ahead of the polls. "On polling day, the page pramukh will make sure that the people listed on their page don't have any problem in getting to the polling booth. It is a mammoth task and won't be easy to manage, but it's a masterstroke if we can pull it off."
In Rajasthan, the BJP is going one step forward. “The party has decided to have two pramukhs for each page. Since every page has a front and a back, we will appoint a pramukh for each side. This is being done to intensively and directly reach out to each voter. This strategy was used in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and the North East. The results are apparent,” a Rajasthan BJP leader said.
“The focus is on states where we are in power, which is why our Rajasthan unit has decided to use this strategy. This will be especially useful for areas where anti-incumbency could hamper our chances. Rajasthan is the largest state in India in terms of area. We need more hands on deck to reach far-flung areas. We need more people to cover more ground,” the leader added.
The state BJP unit has also identified 4.3 crore beneficiaries of central and state government schemes, who they plan to reach out to using the ‘half-page pramukhs’. “These beneficiaries have been identified by the state BJP unit. This was done with the help of local agencies and government departments. All statistics and data on beneficiaries are publically available, we just had to use it. Reaching out to these beneficiaries will be the job of the half-page pramukhs,” a BJP leader said.
Comments
0 comment