Last month, BJP chief Amit Shah had pulled up the state leadership for not carrying out the organisational tasks handed to them.
Chandigarh: Starting Thursday, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar will meet BJP workers across five districts in the state over tea with an aim to stem infighting and iron out differences in his party.
Khattar’s effort to assuage his party cadres comes days after BJP chief Amit Shah expressed his displeasure with the way the party’s Haryana unit is functioning.
To begin with, Khattar’s ‘chai pe charcha’ with party workers will be held in Panchkula, Ambala, Karnal, Kurukshetra and Jind in the next three days. Later, these will be organised in the rest of the state.
On 23 June, Shah had summoned the state’s BJP leadership to Delhi for a preliminary meeting for the parliamentary and Haryana assembly elections next year. Shah, it is learnt, expressed displeasure with the state unit’s functioning.
Sources said infighting was delaying implementation of the organisational programmes in the state.
In fact, the party’s state unit got its act together only two days before the meeting with Shah. On 20 June, Khattar held a marathon meeting with members of women, farmers and minority wings of the BJP, asking them to start disseminating information about the government’s achievements to the people and encourage them to take benefits from NDA schemes.
A day later, the party launched its booth Mahasampark Abhiyaan across the state, as part of which booth-level workers were to connect with households in their respective areas.
The state leadership was seen as having delayed this campaign which had started in other BJP-ruled states within weeks of its launch in November.
The party is also seen lagging in completing a target of meeting 2000 luminaries from the state as part of the ‘Sampark for Samarthan’ campaign launched by Shah. Shah initiated BJP’s outreach programme on 29 May with a meeting with former Indian Army chief Dalbir Singh Suhag.
Following up, Khattar met his ministers on 7 June and announced that the campaign would run in the state until 11 June. While the CM met a handful of people, including an eminent scientist, a retired judge and a businessman, his ministers and other party members have clearly not met 2000 persons as part of the campaign.
Seen as having alienated the public with his “dictatorial” style of politics, Khattar — a first-time MLA and CM — is trying hard to undo the damage. In April, he revived the popular ‘Janta Darbaar’ and held it at his Chandigarh residence, Kurukshetra and in his constituency in Karnal last week.
It was last held in December during which he met people to hear their grievances and resolved them on the spot.
In May, he started a rural outreach campaign, ‘Ek Raat Gramino ke Saath’ (one night in the village) and reviewed the implementation of NDA’s village-level schemes. In April and May, he also held road-shows in Rohtak and Kurukshetra, which he announced will be held in all the districts in the next few months.
Rajiv Jain, media adviser to the CM, said in the first phase the ‘chai pe charcha’ will last three days. “This is part of the CM’s efforts to remain in touch with the public, as also party workers,” he told ThePrint.
He said the aim is to gather feedback about government projects and listen to people’s problems.
“In three-and-a-half years of being CM, Khattar ji has already visited each of the 90 constituencies and has held two-day visits to every district. Then he has been holding jan sabhas and now he is also doing road shows,” added Jain.