Party to hold local leaders responsible if turnouts don’t increase in the remaining rounds
Voters queue up outside a polling booth. Pic/PTI
The top leadership of BJP is upset because of unexpected low turnout in the last two phases. Reports coming from the third round of voting in Maharashtra and elsewhere in the country revealed that the ruling party had issued a warning-like instruction down the line to ensure the increase in voting percentage. In case of low turnout in their respective areas the local leaders will be held responsible. The target set is an increase of at least 370 votes at each booth.
The ruling party’s strength is its deep-rooted organisation and the support it gets from the RSS volunteers to ensure that the party sympathisers go out and vote. The BJP has devised a method called ‘Panna Pramukh’ in which a person is put in charge of one page of the electoral roll. The pramukh must ensure that the voters she or he is responsible for are given information about the party candidate and polling booths.
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The most important part for the pramukh is to be there on the polling day to bring the voters out to the booths. The set-up includes around 1,000 ‘booth pramukhs’ (chiefs) in each constituency and other office-bearers with designations such as ‘shakti pramukh’ and ‘super warriors’. The third phase of polling was held on Tuesday. The next two rounds will be held on May 13 and 20.
Another part that the party looks after keenly is the labharthis — beneficiaries of government welfare schemes. The labharthis are kept in the loop throughout the term. At election time, they are urged to leave their homes to vote for their benefactors. Maharashtra BJP insiders said that state BJP workers were told online in no uncertain terms that if they were to surpass the party’s and NDA’s 2019 performance they would have to increase the voting percentage as much as possible. RSS volunteers work in their own way. Unlike old times, the RSS cadre needs to be identified separately because of incoming entities who are not RSS volunteers-turned-BJP workers.
Dharmendra Jore is political editor, mid-day. He tweets @dharmendrajore
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