Mumbai: Ahead of the upcoming local body elections in Maharashtra, the BJP has planned an extensive public outreach programme to popularise the four newly-inducted Union ministers from Maharashtra as “representatives” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
For the elections, which have been dubbed as a ‘mini assembly poll’, the four ministers — Narayan Rane, Kapil Patil, Bhagwat Karad and Bharati Pawar — will go on a ‘Jan Ashirwad Yatra’ next week.
The 2,200-km yatra will cover Mumbai, Thane, Konkan, Marathwada and North Maharashtra regions of the state. The party has also appointed one local party leader for each minister’s rally to take care of the micro-management and mobilise karyakartas at different locations.
“The ministers will meet locals from different constituencies as representatives of Modiji, of the Union government. They will meet beneficiaries of different schemes, understand their problems and issues,” Sanjay Kelkar, BJP MLA from Thane, who is in charge of planning the yatras, told reporters Friday.
“We will not only mobilise lakhs of karyakartas through these yatras, but also reach out to a large number of people from different sections of the society.”
The ground canvassing is significant as over a dozen municipal corporations, including the civic bodies of Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai, as well as multiple municipal councils and zilla parishads are set to go to polls in the next 18 months.
The polls are likely to set the tone for the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi — comprising the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Congress— as well as the opposition BJP before the 2024 Lok Sabha and state assembly election.
In preparation for the elections, the BJP has also started strengthening its nearly 90,000 booths across Maharashtra, which are the smallest local units in any party’s election campaign.
Rane, Patil, Bhagwat and Pawar were inducted into PM Modi’s Council of Ministers in July after a massive reshuffle. While Rane was inducted as a Cabinet minister and given the micro, small and medium enterprises portfolio, the other three were sworn in as junior ministers — Karad as minister of state in the finance ministry, Patil is with the Ministry of Panchayati Raj and Pawar is minister of state, health.
Also read: Maratha face, Shiv Sena critic, Konkan strongman — why BJP picked Rane for Union Cabinet
Narayan Rane’s rally to be the biggest
Of the four ministers, Rajya Sabha MP Rane’s rally will be the longest and the most elaborate.
Rane, a former Shiv Sena leader who is now the party’s most acerbic critic, will cover almost 650 kilometres over seven days. He will begin his yatra on 19 August with a two-day rally across Mumbai, which is the Shiv Sena’s home turf.
The Shiv Sena has been at the helm of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for close to two decades but in the last election it was neck-and-neck with the BJP winning just two corporators more in 2017.
From Mumbai, Rane will head to the Vasai-Virar region, whose municipal corporation is also headed for polls in the next few months. The BJP has been trying to make inroads into the civic body, which has been a bastion of MLA Hitendra Thakur’s Bahujan Vikas Aghadi.
Rane will then travel across the Konkan region right up to Sindhudurg, his home district.
“Narayan Rane’s yatra will be the biggest. He will stop at 172 places along the way to meet different sections of people — beneficiaries of schemes, farmers, women, students, industrialists and so on,” MLA Kelkar said.
Meanwhile, Patil, Karad and Pawar will start their rallies on 16 August.
Patil, an MP from Bhiwandi, will cover 570 kilometres in his five-day rally, focussing on the Thane and Raigad districts. The Thane, Ulhasnagar, Bhiwandi Nizampur and Navi Mumbai civic body elections are also scheduled for next year.
Karad will travel 623 kilometres, halting at 150 stops, across six districts in Marathwada where he will visit several poll-bound cities and towns such as Parbhani, Aurangabad, Jalna and Beed.
Pawar, who represents the Dindori assembly constituency with a large tribal population, will mostly canvass across tribal districts such as Palghar, Nashik, Nandurbar and Dhule, covering 431 kilometres across five days.
(Edited by Rachel John)
Also read: Why Uddhav’s son Tejas — ‘Viv Richards of family, finder of wild secrets’ — is creating a buzz