Idea is to get senior leaders to interact with grassroots workers while sharing home-cooked meals. First event sees CM Yogi Adityanath’s participation.
New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh BJP has launched a Tiffin Pe Charcha — where senior party leaders are interacting with grassroots workers over food brought from home — six months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged his party to implement such an initiative to instil confidence among party workers.
The UP BJP unit held its first Tiffin Pe Charcha during the recently-held state executive meeting at Meerut on 11 and 12 August, where Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, state president Mahendra Nath Pandey and others shared food with party workers.
“There were around 650 members of the executive, from top state leaders to party workers. Of those, around 150 to 200 members were from Meerut and the nearby areas,” Vijay Bahadur Pathak, BJP state general secretary, told ThePrint.
“I asked all the members from Meerut and the nearby areas to bring tiffin from home with food for at least two people. They were not told with whom they were going to share the food”.
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Pathak said that those present were divided into groups of six with two tiffins on each table. The senior leaders were among those present at the table. The UP unit now wants to replicate the initiative in all districts of the state.
“We are a party of workers and sitting together and having food is part of our culture. We are going to do it at every district at different levels, where senior leaders will hold discussion over food,” Pathak said.
PM’s push
The idea was first mooted by Modi after the party suffered defeats in the Alwar and Ajmer bypolls in Rajasthan in February. The Prime Minister had then instructed BJP leaders to organise booth-wise meetings with workers across the country over food brought from home. He had even coined it Tiffin Pe Charcha.
The effort is vital for the BJP in UP, where in April and July, workers had accused the party brass of neglecting them during BJP president Amit Shah visits to Lucknow.
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The party is also looking to focus on Dalit party workers, particularly in the wake of the three consecutive by-election defeats in Gorakhpur, Phulpur and Kairana. The BJP fears that Dalits may move away from the party.
The state unit will also urge the Dalit party workers to bring their home-cooked food. This after an earlier initiative of senior leaders having food at Dalit homes sparked controversy after many went with their own food and bottled water. It had forced even some BJP Dalit MPs to come forward and criticise the party’s efforts.