BJP forms panel to help government roll out social schemes

New Delhi: In a bid to help publicise and implement social welfare schemes initiated under Prime Minister Narendra Modi government, BJP has formed a committee for active coordination between the party and the government. The move, BJP sources said, was a conscious strategy to ensure that benefits of welfare programmes being launched by the government reach everyone and the party wants to avoid the repeat of the previous NDA regime when many welfare programmes could not help the poor as they were not publicised well.

BJP Vice President Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi while describing the new coordination initiative said, "The unprecedented success of the just launched Jan Dhan scheme is also due to party's active participation in creating awareness about the initiative.

"As against the original target of bank accounts, we managed to open double the numbers on the launch of the scheme because we had already spread a word around about the launch of the initiative."

The committee formed to ensure that government programmes reach grassroots comprises Union Ministers Ananth Kumar, Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goel and Smriti Irani on the government side and BJP leaders Naqvi, JP Nadda, Ram Lal and Bhupendra Yadav.

The mandate of the committee is to achieve better coordination between the party and the government in publicising new schemes and to get the best possible results, Naqvi said. The BJP leader also said that the publicity of government schemes would be on the lines of party's campaign to seek votes.

"Just as we go to people to ask for their votes during elections, we will go to them seeking their participation in government schemes and programmes," said Naqvi. He said that the BJP is taking no chances this time considering the during the previous NDA regime under Atal Behari Vajpayee, schemes initiated by the government could not reach the grassroots due to slackened government machinery.

The BJP's move comes at a time when the principal opposition Congress is blaming poor marketing of its UPA Government's programmes as the single largest factor behind the party dismal Lok Sabha performance.