New Delhi: Calling 200 people every week, having tea with at least two voters daily, writing slogans on polling booths — these are some of the tasks senior party leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah has assigned to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers in Madhya Pradesh this week as a part of the campaign for elections scheduled later this year, ThePrint has learnt.
Shah began assigning weekly tasks last month during his 30 July visit to MP, party sources said.
Not wanting a repeat of the Karnataka elections, where the party suffered a crushing defeat in May, the BJP has set about getting its state unit in order, and is working on all fronts — senior leaders are reaching out to party cadres via zonal meetings, election management convenors have been appointed at the district level, and weekly targets are set for workers.
“Weekly targets are fixed to finetune the election machinery and organisation,” said state BJP secretary general Ranveer Singh Rawat, speaking to ThePrint.
“After the ongoing assembly meets, being held in each constituency, end by 20 August, MLA pravas (tours) will start where each selected legislator from other states will visit an assembly seat for a week, and get feedback from the public ahead of the Jan Ashirwad Yatra next month,” Rawat added.
Party sources said senior leaders — from Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and state BJP president VD Singh, to national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya and MP election management convenor Narendra Singh Tomar — are holding meetings in different zones of Madhya Pradesh to contain discontent and boost the morale of cadres.
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Weekly targets, 57 district convenors
Amit Shah has tasked party workers with highlighting the achievements of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, which has been in power for three terms, and comparing them with those of the chief ministerial tenure of the Congress’s Digvijaya Singh.
Each worker has been asked to write party slogans on the walls of a booth every week. There are 64,000 booths in MP.
In July, the party deployed Narendra Singh Tomar as the election management convenor for MP, and then last week appointed 57 district election convenors in the state to focus on infighting, and keep the morale of the cadres high before the elections.
Bhagwandas Sabnani, the party’s general secretary in the state, told ThePrint that these convenors are senior leaders who have been appointed to maintain “consistent engagement with the cadres to build momentum for the elections”.
However, requesting anonymity, another party functionary claimed that the appointments of district convenors had another purpose too.
“Many of those leaders who have been given these posts might not get a party ticket for assembly elections…they have been given this responsibility at district level to keep them involved in the elections,” the functionary said.
Last month, the party appointed former cabinet minister Jayant Malaiya as the head of its manifesto committee. Malaiya lost the 2018 assembly election to Congress leader Rahul Lodhi who joined the BJP in 2020 with Scindia. Lodhi contested the 2021 Damoh bypoll but lost, blaming it on Malaiya. Party sources said Malaiya has been sulking since last year when the party issued him a showcause notice for indiscipline.
Similarly, Ajay Bishnoi, who raised a question mark on the party leadership in the past, has been placed on the election management and manifesto committees. The BJP’s Backward Morcha chief Narayan Singh Kushwaha, who lost the Gwalior south seat to Praveen Pathak in 2018, has also been placed on the election management committee.
“The main role of convenors is to rope in former party officials or legislators in the campaign, address any discontent before polls, and give feedback to the leadership about constituencies,” said Jawahar Singh, the election convenor in Sagar district. “The older generation, which may have felt alienated over the years, has been given charge of managing elections.”
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Strategic meetings, outreach to veterans
Since July this year, Shah has held four meetings of party leaders in Delhi and Bhopal. Last week, too, leaders from MP were called to Delhi to discuss weekly targets and also the Prime Minister’s rally in Sagar on 12 August to lay the foundation of a Ravidas temple.
Last week, CM Chouhan visited an old colleague and former finance minister Raghavji, who had been expelled from the party following a sodomy allegation against him in 2013. However, in June this year, the Madhya Pradesh High Court quashed the First Information Report (FIR) against him.
Party sources said the strategic reason for the CM’s meeting with 90-year-old Raghavji was to send out a message among the cadres that the BJP stood by its people.
Meanwhile, Tomar has been crisscrossing the state — from Rewa to Guna — to enthuse party workers before the polls.
A party source said that addressing a meeting in Narela, Bhopal, last week, Tomar said: “We are human beings…there will always be complaints against each other. But when facing war, we should forget our grievances and focus on defeating our opponents. After that, there will always be time to resolve our issues.”
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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