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JP Nadda’s message to Uttar Pradesh BJP: Performance will matter, not profiles
While tickets to sitting lawmakers would be decided on the report of the party in-charges of all 403 assembly constituencies and ground-level feedback, the BJP leadership will get ministers and senior leaders to attend booth-level campaigns in Uttar Pradesh
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief JP Nadda laid down the blueprint for the 2022 state assembly elections during his two-day visit to Uttar Pradesh on Saturday and Sunday, making it clear that only performance would matter, and profiles won’t, leaders privy to the development said.
Nadda concluded his visit to UP, holding party meetings in Lucknow and Agra, before flying back to Delhi on Sunday evening.
While tickets to sitting lawmakers would be decided on the report of the party in-charges of all 403 assembly constituencies and ground level feedback, the BJP leadership has also decided to ensure “collective responsibility” by getting ministers and senior leaders to attend booth-level campaigns and take ownership of associating voters with the party at the booth-level, party leaders said.
From Monday, the BJP unit in UP, as well as the government, would set in motion a series of voter-connect initiatives through the meeting of panna pramukh or in-charge of a page in voters list. The experiment of panna pramukhs was tested in Gujarat in 2007.
“The booth adhyaksh and panna pramukh (booth president and in-charge of page on voters’ list), our lowest representatives at the grassroots are going to be the key in the party campaign. To ensure that the cadres are galvanised at the local level, even ministers and senior leaders could be made panna pramukh in their regions,” a BJP leader said.
“Senior leaders would also visit booth presidents to ensure that the top leadership is connected with the ground level cadres,” party leaders said.
To continue the engagement with villages, the BJP is thinking of newer ways to engage with state’s countryside, party leaders said.
The party had organised a get-together of all the new district panchayat and kshetra panchayat chairpersons in Lucknow on Saturday and tasked them with specific assignments.
On August 23, the party would launch “booth vijay” campaign.
To supplement this rural engagement, the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), would launch a month long “ek gaon, ek tiranga (one village, one tricolour)” campaign from August 15.
The UP BJP unit and the Yogi Adityanath government would regularly undertake people-connect campaigns as well as initiatives. The party leadership would also ensure that before his big rallies begin, Prime Minister Narendra Modi would keep connecting virtually with the people of the state on a regular basis, BJP leaders said.
While the UP BJP leaders would undertake a campaign to clean memorials and statues of great leaders across the state on Monday, PM Modi would virtually transfer the next installment of PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi to beneficiaries and also interact with some of them from Kasganj.
On August 5, the PM had interacted with poorest of the poor beneficiaries of PM-Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PM-GKAY) in Varanasi, Sultanpur, Jhansi, Kushinagar and Saharanpur. On August 10, the PM will launch Ujjwala 2.0 from Mahoba in Bundelkhand. Ujjwala, the free gas connection scheme, was earlier launched from Ballia in UP in 2016.
“Modi is the party’s lifeline and so he would continue to interact with UP in some way or the other before his big rallies start happening closer to the elections,” a party leader said. The statue and memorial cleanliness campaigns would conclude on August 15. They would be followed by party meetings in all assembly segments till August 20.
