Gurugram: Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini will sit down for lunch at a party office in Pinjore on Tuesday afternoon just like any other day. Except this time, he won’t be served but will eat from a steel tiffin brought from home alongside party workers who have never shared a table with him before.
He won’t be the only one: at around the same time, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state president Archana Gupta will also carry a tiffin from home for lunch at the Rai Shakti Kendra in Sonipat. BJP organisation general secretary Phanindranath Sharma will do the same at the Gannaur Shakti Kendra.
Between 12 noon and 3 pm on Tuesday, the same scene will repeat itself 4,729 times at every Shakti Kendra in the northern state.
The BJP will hold simultaneous “tiffin meetings” as part of a state-wide party exercise to boost booth-level organisation in one of the BJP’s largest cadre-mobilisation drives in Haryana since the 2024 Assembly elections.
The bring-your-own lunch exercise will involve everyone from the chief minister down to booth-level karyakartas (workers). Every worker, office-bearer, speaker and public representative attending has been asked to bring lunch from home and eat together before the day’s real business begins: booth organisation.
Gupta estimates that, based on an average of 16 workers per kendra (centre), nearly 70,000 workers would take part in Tuesday’s meetings. “Empowered Shakti Kendras alone will give strength to the organisation.”
The BJP state chief said the shared meal is meant to do more than build goodwill. It is designed to flatten hierarchies, strengthen booth committees, identify organisational gaps and improve coordination between workers and leaders.
Haryana has 4,729 Shakti Kendras, each headed by a Shakti Kendra pramukh (head) and overseeing two to five polling booths, she added.
She told ThePrint on Monday that the party normally had four to five polling booths under one Shakti Kendra in villages, while in cities it had two polling booths.
While the party holds Shakti Kendra meetings every month, Gupta said this is the first time all 4,729 will meet on the same day, at the same hour.
The meetings will also push the digital learning programme, the formation of booth committees, and ensure the Prime Minister’s Mann Ki Baat is heard at every booth and the details are uploaded on the party’s Saral Portal.
The party has assigned duties to all 4,729 leaders who will chair these meetings, a list that starts with the chief minister and includes the state president, ministers, MPs and MLAs.
Mandatory participation
Participation from BJP office-bearers, workers and public representatives in their respective Shakti Kendra areas is mandatory.
The groundwork for the exercise was laid on Sunday when Gupta and Sharma met workers from Panchkula district at the BJP state headquarters, Panchkamal, and then held a virtual Zoom meeting with functionaries from the remaining 25 organisational districts.
The BJP’s organisational map does not mirror the state’s administrative divisions. While the government has 23 districts, the party has carved the state into 27 districts, with Gurugram and Faridabad split into two each, and Dabwali in Sirsa and Gohana in Sonipat separate units.
Gupta used the occasion to target the Congress, accusing the opposition of manufacturing “an atmosphere of lies, confusion and misinformation”. She said BJP workers must counter it with facts and evidence while reaching every section of society with details of the Centre’s and state government’s welfare schemes.
Sharma said the BJP functions as a booth-based party, and that no organisational strength is possible without a strong booth. Every office-bearer, he said, must treat booth empowerment as the top priority through regular visits and sustained contact with workers.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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