It’s a first for the Congress president who will be meeting with grassroots workers in Mumbai on 12 June.
New Delhi: Taking a leaf out of BJP president Amit Shah’s election strategy, Rahul Gandhi is set to interact with booth-level Congress workers. The Congress president’s first such meeting is scheduled to take place at Goregaon in Mumbai on 12 June.
“Around 10 to 15,000 booth-level workers will be attending the meeting with the Congress president,” said Sanjay Nirupam, the Mumbai Congress president. “There will be at least one person from every booth in Mumbai and for certain booths, there could be more than one person.”
The Congress president, who has been seen engaging with a cross-section of society — from students and businessmen to farmers and labourers — has never addressed those at the lower rungs of his party organisation.
Nirupam said this initiative will hold the party in good stead.
“It is Rahul Gandhi’s initiative to reach out to every Congress worker and make them feel he is their president and that anyone can directly approach him,” he said.
A BJP strategy
Booth management is at the core of BJP president Amit Shah’s poll strategy and is considered a game changer for the party.
Take a cue from the ruling party, the Congress has been trying to improve its booth management, and the process of forming booth committees is underway in several states such as Karnataka, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh.
The party was stung into action after the Gujarat assembly elections last year, when it found it hard to get even one Congress worker in every booth.
Post-Gujarat, the party started Shakti, a project through which it hoped to connect with grassroots workers in all states. Gandhi’s Mumbai meeting is just an extension of the homework that the party has been doing since January.
Based on the success and response to the meeting in Mumbai, the party is planning to replicate such sessions with the Congress president in poll-bound states such as Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. The idea will be implemented in other states too.