india

Updated: May 07, 2018 16:31 IST

After a change of guard in their respective organizations barely seven months before the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress are going full steam for booth-level micro management and innovative ideas to get the better of each other.

In the meeting of workers and office-bearers both parties continue to emphasise on booth level management but are simultaneously reaching out to more and more people in every ward in cities and in every panchayat in rural areas. The outreach programme seems to be one of the top priorities on their agenda.

Both the BJP and the Congress state units recently saw changes at the top. While Rakesh Singh replaced Nandkumar Singh Chauhan as the state BJP chief, veteran Congressman Kamal Nath took over as the new state Congress president replacing Arun Yadav.

BJP wants its office-bearers and public representatives to adopt a panchayat each and go the whole hog to strengthen the party base there.

The party’s BJP national general secretary Ram Lal told the party office-bearers recently, the work of panchayat in charge includes monitoring work of booth committees and ‘panna pramukh’ (in charge voters list page), preparing a list of ‘key voters’, contacting each and every member of voters’ families, coordination between the booth committees and public representatives.

He also said the job includes identifying booths where the party didn’t perform well in the previous election, getting grievances of party workers in particular and voters in general addressed by MP, MLA and other public representatives, forming groups of party workers on Whatsapp, apprising people of central and state governments’ schemes and achievements etc.

BJP national president Amit Shah made it clear during his recent visit that popular leadership of Narendra Modi and Shivraj Singh Chouhan notwithstanding, the party leadership wishes to win the elections on the strength of the party.

The Congress on its part having adopted Kerala’s organisation set up to decentralise the block in charge’s authority up to mandlam (consisting of 25-30 booths) and sector (consisting of 10 booths) units in charge, is looking for appointing localities in-charge. The work of a locality or basti in-charge will be almost same as those of panchayat in-charge in BJP.

The Congress is already working on constitution and strengthening of working committees and assigning each and every page of voters’ lists to party leaders. The party also wants to engage retired government employees and officers in its task of booth to ward and panchayat level election management. The party is also working on how to take pro-Congress voters to the booth and identifying the workers and leaders who can do it.

“Panna in-charge system did well for us during Kolaras and Mungaoli assembly seats by-polls held sometime back. We detected a huge number of fake voters and complained to Election Commission of India (ECI) about the same. The result was that we won both the seats despite the entire cabinet of Shivraj Singh Chouhan government camping in the areas and misusing the government machinery”, said Pankaj Chaturvedi, state Congress in-charge.

But the BJP dismisses the Congress’ efforts, insisting that it is trying to replicate the saffron party’s approach.

“Congress doesn’t believe in ideology and organisation but a family. They are trying to imitate BJP as far as constitution of booth committees is concerned but BJP has its committed cadre which works round the clock for strengthening of the party and welfare of people,” state BJP spokesperson Rajnish Agrawal said.

Both the parties are also working vigorously on their social media campaigns this time. Whatsapp is expected to be used in a major way in their campaigns.

Congress lost to the BJP in a humiliating defeat in 2003, recording its lowest tally in the state assembly with 38 seats after two consecutive terms in power from 1993 to 2003. Since then, the saffron party has not looked back going strength to strength despite infighting in the party leading to change of guard in the government twice- in 2004 and 2005.

There are 65197 polling stations in the state for the ensuing assembly elections in 2018, including 48374 in rural areas and 16823 in urban areas covered under 230 assembly constituencies. The state has 313 blocks.