After engineering a near win for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka, its national president Amit Shah has now set his eyes on the Telugu states – Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
In a recent meeting with party workers, Shah expressed his disappointment at the party’s performance in the state and told leaders he would create two WhatsApp groups with the mandal in-charges of both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to take on the two regional parties – TRS and TDP.
“Amit Shah himself will be the administrator of these WhatsApp groups, and will receive regular updates from the mandal in-charges,” BJP Telangana spokesperson NV Subash tells TNM.
The party plans to emulate the model of ‘microscopic’ election management, which worked for the BJP in Gujarat, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.
Out of the 33,000-odd polling booths in Telangana, the party has constituted a 10-member polling booth committee in 25,000 polling booths. Additionally, another 10 members from the BJP Yuva Morcha will be helping the polling booth committee in propagating against voting for the TRS and pull them in favour the BJP. The party admits that they have not been able to penetrate the 8,000 polling booths, which includes Old City (Hyderabad), the bastion of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul (AIMIM) party for decades.
“The polling booth committee will have a president, who will be reporting its performance to the Shakthi Kendra chief. Each Shakthi Kendra chief will be taking care of three polling booths,” says Subash.
Desperate to win in Telangana, the party has also brought in T Raja Singh, the MLA from Goshamahal, who has stirred trouble in the past. Raja Singh, an RSS man, is known for his staunch anti-Muslim stance, and the party has kept its distance from him in the past. However, they have been engaging him in everyday affairs.
Not many days ago, Singh had threatened the BJP that he would quit the party if they didn’t build the Ram temple in Ayodhya before the 2019 elections.
However, when Shah had recently visited Hyderabad, Singh met Shah, and since he has been visiting the party office regularly. “We want all the winning horses,” the spokesperson says.
Identifying potential BJP voters
Rather than wasting their time on people who are less likely to vote for their party, the BJP plans to spread its party ideology and talk about the success of its governance.
“The party would be concentrating only on potential voters, who are definitely voting. Each polling booth member will visit every household and identify the voters who are leaning towards the BJP. Discarding the others, we will be concentrating solely on these people. This has been our winning formula even in Karnataka,” says Subash.
The national leadership has urged the state leaders to extoll the development plank under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and expose the misdeeds of the TRS.