NEW DELHI: BJP appears to have taken the lead over its rivals with the formation of a well-trained 25-member executive committee in each of the over 1.25 lakh polling booths in Uttar Pradesh. With teams on ground, party chief Amit Shah has planned extensive campaigns to back four Parivartan Yatras, besides carpet-bombing the key electoral battleground with over 25 rallies to be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“There are about 1.40 lakh polling booths in UP. We have constituted executive committees in 1.25 lakh of them, which are headed by a president. BJP is the only political party in the state which has got such an organisational structure at the booth level,” said Rameshwar Chourasia, state party co-in-charge. Samajwadi Party and BSP leave the task of the polling booth management to the party candidates.
The BJP has also planned specific campaigns among the women, youth and the elders with the strategy to back the four Parivartan Yatras, which will be flagged off in the first week of November. “After the yatra passes through a certain area, another campaign will reach there to keep the people mobilised. The party has drawn plans to campaign among the youth where the Modi government’s initiatives in Mudra Bank scheme, Start Up and Stand Up India would specially be showcased,” said a senior BJP functionary. The four yatras to be flagged off by the BJP chief will commence in Saharanpur, Lalitpur, Sonabhadra and Balia, which after criss-crossing the state would converge at a rally in Lucknow to be addressed by the PM on December 25, birthday of patriarch Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
“Even while five states (UP, Goa, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipur) will have Assembly elections at the same time, PM will address more than 25 rallies in UP. He had addressed 31 rallies during Bihar elections last year. People have shown vigour to come to PM’s rallies. Therefore, he will address quite a large number of them,” added the BJP leader.
The BJP chief has also constituted various caste groups, which would extensively campaign among their communities. “People cast votes for their castes and after declaration of winners, there are heartburns among the castes to which the candidate doesn’t belong. The group of influential caste personalities will take care of such concerns,” said the BJP leader.
Shah, sources said, has taken separate meetings with the booth level executives, while party leaders are holding deliberations in joint meeting of members of all such committees by clubbing two Assembly seats.