NEW DELHI: To replicate the success of Assembly elections in three states, the Congress has roped in volunteers from Maharashtra and Kerala to train its booth-level workers in the national capital for the parliamentary elections.
These volunteers trained workers on booth management in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh where the party managed to wrest power last year from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“Apart from basic training to draw Congress sympathisers to booths, our foot soldiers will be trained to identify fault and tampering or malfunctioning of EVMs. Workshops will be organised in all districts to educate them about EVMs and to check their seal,” Delhi Congress spokesperson Jitender Kochar said.
The city has about 13, 500 booths in seven constituencies. Voting will take place on May 12 in the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha election.
Kochar said the Central leadership will soon decide dates and venues of training camps. Another senior party functionary said a guidebook, PowerPoint presentations, and a video had been prepared. “They (party workers) are being taught to read voters’ list and segregate party sympathisers. A 50-member committee will be formed for each polling booth. Our emphasis is to identify the people who own vehicles, as they can play an important role to bring out more people on the polling day.”
On Monday, the Delhi Congress held a convention, ‘Mera Booth, Mera Gaurav (My Booth, My Pride), for its booth presidents.“The AICC will monitor the entire exercise. Booth management is a game changer. Workers should remain highly motivated else it can heavily cost a party. One of the reasons for our poor performances in 2013 and 2014 was that we didn’t aggressively deployed booth-level workers,” the party leader said.