BJP's outreach programmes in Bengal to woo voters
Kolkata: Apart from the round-the-clock rallies and political programmes, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will kick off another bunch of outreach programmes for the next and the last four phases of the West Bengal assembly elections from Tuesday.
To add the 'new dimension' to its election campaign, BJP will launch a day-long door-to-door campaign in the poll-bound constituencies by senior party leaders, Union Ministers, Members of Parliament etc.
So far 40 BJP MPs, including central ministers, eight chief ministers of BJP-ruled states and many central leaders of the party have been given different tasks related to the assembly polls. They will also take part in the door-to-door campaign.
Even the celebrity candidates of BJP, Payal Sarkar, Tanushree Chakraborty, Yash Dasgupta, Srabanti Chatterjee among others will do the campaign in their respective areas. According to a party source, "In a special add-on to the election campaign and to effectively reach out to the general public, this has been planned." Earlier on Friday, Amit Shah carried out a door-to-door at the slums in the Bhowanipore constituency. Union Home Minister's sudden visit to the families, who live in the narrow lanes of the slum, left a lasting impression on many. During his campaign, Shah handed over leaflets of his party with his image and asked them to vote for the BJP and also promised to look into their issues if the saffron party comes to power in West Bengal. A party source claimed that this door-to-door outreach campaign will also be like the above mentioned.
The BJP leadership has identified 40 Assembly constituencies in and around Kolkata, especially the urban or presidency area. More than 2000 small street corner meetings with the strength of 200 to 500 people will take place at either local community halls or residential areas or different housing societies. Further, this will be focused on a specific caste-based community like Jain, Matua, Jaiswal, Marwari communities or of specific occupation like doctors, lawyers, academicians etc.
Union Home Minister and the former BJP president Amit Shah will launch this campaign from the Dum Dum Assembly constituency on Tuesday evening. Later, he will address another such meeting in Baranagar. These meetings will be held in the evening time so that especially the middle-class people can join after their office-time and people do not have to travel for a long distance to attend a public meeting.
Experts feel that the new campaign strategy of BJP is to woo the urban voters. According to the analysis of recent Assembly poll results and the last general elections' result, BJP is yet to be popular among urban voters. However, the 2019 Lok Sabha election result shows that the increasing size of the middle-class and a new form of ethnopolitical majoritarianism, delinked from a religious Hindu nationalism, helped the BJP shed its tag as an upper-caste party.
