A group of thieves from Meerut have outsmarted the BJP leaders in thinking 'out of the box'.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi

The party's innovative "Ek Note Kamal Par Vote" drive, launched to collect funds for BJP's Lok Sabha campaign, suffered a shocker on Sunday when five of the 30 collection boxes kept at Meerut's Shatabdi Nagar Ground during Narendra Modi's rally were found broken.

The boxes were kept at different spots on the ground to collect Rs 1 from each voter of the party under the "Ek Note Kamal Par Vote" campaign. Sources in the BJP told Mail Today that some miscreants damaged the boxes with some blunt object and decamped with about Rs 4,000 collected in each box.

"Nobody knows when it happened. We had divided the ground into 30 blocks and there was a box in each block. Maybe some people came in a group, surrounded the boxes and broke them. Since we have counted Rs 4,000 to Rs 5,000 in each box, we believe similar amounts were stolen from the damaged boxes. I suspect they decamped with at least Rs 20,000," said a BJP leader on condition of anonymity.

Gajendra Sharma, BJP's media-in-charge of Meerut Mahanagar, however, claimed that it was the handiwork of some street urchins who were collecting garbage from the ground.

"There were 30 tin boxes or canisters out of which five were damaged by the street urchins. Since the boxes were kept there even after Modi's rally, they must have damaged them in the evening. I think they had gone there to collect papers and other garbage and got an opportunity to break open the boxes. When we went to the rally venue later in the evening to collect the money, we found five damaged boxes lying on the ground," said Sharma.