NEW DELHI: ‘Bottom-up’ is seemingly emerging as BJP’s answer to the looming prospect of Opposition unity in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The party is counting on this strategy to significantly increase party’s vote share. “We will not contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from the top. We are going right to the bottom to work the way up to win the elections. Each of our polling booth workers will be mapping four households from now till the Lok Sabha elections,” said a BJP national general-secretary.
While the saffron outfit claims to have significantly expanded its worker base from 11 crores, the party is currently undertaking the exercise to authenticate its members who enrolled through phone calls with paper works. “The verification of the workers will be completed within a few weeks. The BJP would then entrust the verified party workers with the responsibility to execute Mission 2019,” added the BJP leader.
The party had a vote share of about 32 per cent in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections when it had contested from 428 out of 545 seats and had won 282.
“The party will be contesting 450 Lok Sabha seats across the country this time. It has already mapped each of the polling booths in these 450 constituencies. The booth-level worker base is being trained currently for the electioneering task in all these seats,” said the leader.BJP chief Amit Shah has tasked party leaders to aim for 50-plus vote share in about 300 constituencies. The party had finished second in as many as 54 constituencies. “The 2014 polls demonstrated that the BJP either won or came second in 336 Lok Sabha seats. But there is a difference between 2014 and 2019.
Last time, there was a Narendra Modi wave along with a massive negative vote against the Congress-led UPA. But the 2019 Lok Sabha elections would be a new game altogether in the sense that the BJP will have to defend the mandate, with the Opposition uniting in a number of key states. The party is, therefore, banking on battles at the grassroots level by putting party workers on the front,” added the BJP leader.
Target set for BJP leaders
BJP chief Amit Shah has tasked party leaders to aim for 50-plus vote share in about 300 constituencies. The saffron party had finished second in as many as 54 seats.