Local body polls in Maharashtra: BJP’s army of 3 million at work

Maharashtra BJP is preparing an army of 3 million workers under its outreach programme for the ensuing local body polls

Determined to retain its hold over municipal and district bodies and wrest those with the ruling coalition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is readying a massive election machinery in the state.

Union minister Narayan Rane at Jan Ashirwad Yatra, BJP’s outreach programme in Konkan, Maharashtra, on August 24. (HT FILE)

According to party leaders involved in the preparation process, BJP is preparing an army of 3 million workers under its Samarth Booth Abhiyan – the outreach programme for the ensuing local body elections. With more than two-third local bodies slated to face elections early next year, the party has set the ball rolling by preparing on three fronts. The party has also started informing the Central government and local bodies’ performance to the people. Its top leadership is concentrating on handpicking of right candidates, for the later stage, as the elections come closer.

Twenty-three of the 27 municipal corporations in the state, 27 of the 36 district councils, over 300 out of 362 nagar panchayats and municipal councils and more than 290 panchayat samitis are scheduled to go to polls in the first half of next year. The elections are touted as mini-Assembly polls as they would show which party is in a better position and likely to set the tone for the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls to be held two years later.

BJP currently holds the highest local bodies in the state. Of the 2,736 corporators in 27 municipal corporations, BJP has 1099; of 2,000 members in 36 district councils, the party has the highest, 526, sitting members. In 362 municipal councils and nagar panchayats, the party has 1944 sitting members out of total strength of 7,493 of these bodies.

Samarth Booth Abhiyan

According to party leaders, the person-to-person contact, developed way ahead of the elections, has been strength of the party. Strengthening it further, the party has launched the Shyamaprasad Mukherjee Samarth Booth Abhiyan for the local body polls. The outreach programme will see a head appointed for each of the 96,605 polling booths the state has. Below them, 31 panna pramukhs or head of electoral roll page – which has about 30 voters – will be shouldered with the responsibility of getting in touch with each of the voters multiple times till the day of voting. Five booths will have a Shakti Kendra Pramukh. The booth-level workers have been given orientation, training and introduced with the use of technology.

BJP legislative Council member Ramdas Ambatkar, convenor of the Samarth Booth Abhiyan drive, said that the more than 3 million party workers are being roped in for the drive, which kicked off on July 6, and will be completed on September 17.

“We have completed appointments of booth and page heads on 80,000 booths and the remaining ones will be completed in the next few days. Every booth has around 30 pages of voters and each page covers around 12 families. We already have roped in 2.4 million workers and the number is expected to cross 3 million in the next few days. We expect our page head to get in touch with the families from time-to-time to take the programmes of the party to them and establish contacts,” he said.

The party workers heading the booths are shouldered with the responsibility of upgrading the performance.

“We have categorised booths in A, B and C categories based on the votes polled by the party candidates last time. The booth workers are expected to upgrade the performance by continuously being in contacts with the voters. The workers help the families in solving issues related to civic problems and employment on a regular basis and get them attached to the party,” Ambatkar said.

The drive has the backup of the war rooms which have been set up in each district and in turn all the war rooms connected with state-level war room. “The war rooms work on three levels – handling of social media, establishing communications till booth-level workers and creating contents which are distributed among voters. The war rooms take feedback and cross verifies if the information provided from the lower level is correct and working. At the same time, it also provides the content based on the programmes and schemes implemented for the people at various levels,” said a party functionary.

The two programmes undertaken by party’s two top state leaders – leader of opposition Devendra Fadnavis and state unit chief Chandrakant Patil – in the past two days indicate how utmost importance is given to the outreach programme. On Wednesday, Fadnavis had visited 23 booth pramukhs at their homes from his constituency in Nagpur. Patil on Tuesday had addressed more than 100,000 party workers and leaders, including booth pramukhs and shakti kendra pramukhs, in a virtual meeting.

Batting on Central schemes

The party aims to bat on the schemes and programmes launched by the Narendra Modi government. The district-level war rooms are engaged in creating the content related to the schemes and benefits extended to public through various central schemes including Pradhan Mantri (PM) Awas Yoajana, PM-Kisan and Ujjwala Yojana, among others. As part of the outreach programme, the state unit is felicitating the beneficiaries of these schemes to set examples before other voters.

“The Jan Ashirwad Yatra by our newly inducted Union ministers was another such attempt to reach out to the people to take our work to them, understand their issues and establish contacts. Similarly, we have been taking development works in the local bodies held by us to the people. It is presented to them in such a manner that people themselves compare our performance with that of the earlier parties such as the Congress,” said party core committee member and former minister Sudhir Mungantiwar.

As part of the party strategy of taking the performance to the people, state leaders inaugurated developmental projects in Pune and Nagpur. In Mumbai, the party will attack Shiv Sena for the alleged corruption during its three-decade stint in the civic body and poor development of the city.

“The party plank in BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) election will be development of Mumbai. We will try to convince the voters about how important it is to elect BJP to power in BMC for the development of the city and its infrastructure,” said a former city unit chief of the party.

Picking right candidates

The state unit of the party learnt lessons after the legislative Council elections last December, wherein it lost four out of six seats, including two in its citadels Pune and Nagpur. The conclusion drawn during the introspection by the leadership was faulty selection of candidates.

The lessons were learnt immediately, and party put its strategy in the right perspective during the Pandharpur bypoll in May.

“In the bypolls, we were swimming against the tide. It was Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) traditional seat, the sympathy wave was in their favour because the son of the sitting legislator was named the candidate after his father’s demise and the three ruling parties (Sena, NCP and Congress) were unitedly standing against us. All stalwart leaders from the three parties campaigned against us. But the right strategy helped us in adding a legislator in the lower house. It has given us a confidence that it is possible to fight against the three,” said another leader.

The party has already started tapping the right candidates for the local body elections. The leadership has identified potential candidates from other parties with high possibility of winning over its own probable candidates.

“The experiment of importing leaders from other parties worked well during the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in 2019. We do not have our base in many districts where we will have to depend on the strong local leaders from other parties. Ultimately, winability matters in the polls. There will be an influx of leaders from other parties in Mumbai and other cities,” the leader said.

Party leaders also feel that induction of leaders like Kripa Shankar Singh and elevation of Narayan Rane as Union minister will help them in these elections. They claimed that more such leaders from other parties are being tapped for induction in BJP.

Fighting without power

A section of BJP state unit firmly believes that retaining the existing strength in local bodies is a herculean task before them.

“The jump from fourth to top position in terms of members in the corporations, district councils and nagar panchayats could be possible because of the power we had in state until 2019. Power at state level helps in managing government machinery for the benefit of the ruling parties during the polls. Many local leaders from other parties were detained by digging out old cases against them during the Kalyan Dombivli civic polls in 2017. It naturally helped us in winning sizable seats in the civic body. We do not have that advantage this time,” said another leader.

Secondly, its three vs one for BJP across the state as the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) partners are likely to fight the polls in alliance.

BJP’s state general secretary Shrikant Bharatiya said they see it as an opportunity and 50% of the political space is available for them.

“We could grab the half of the space in Pandharpur bypoll. The strength does not get multiply for the three ruling parties even if they fight unitedly as the psyche of the Indian voter recognises political parties as either the ruling party or the one sitting in opposition. In that sense, the three ruling parties will be treated as a ruling unit. The workers of Shiv Sena and NCP cannot work together at local level even if the parties decide to fight polls together. They have been traditional opponents for years, while our fight is against the three parties who have failed on all fronts as ruling parties. As such, we have an equal opportunity against them,” he said.

He added that the Shiv Sena would face major loss in these elections for obvious reasons.

“In Mumbai, Sena will face double anti-incumbency for three decades of power in BMC as well as because of the state government’s poor performance. Besides, voters believing in a certain ideology have not liked Sena’s decision of joining hands with NCP and Congress by ditching us,” he said.

Political analyst Hemant Desai said BJP has been ahead of all other parties in term of their preparations.

“Be in power or out of it, the party takes all elections very seriously and makes preparations at micro level. While ruling parties look to be quiet on that front, BJP has been holding constant meetings with workers and leaders. The party had won maximum local bodies when they were in power. It may be a tough task to retain those civic bodies, but they are giving 100% of their efforts to retain them.”

Change in guard ahead of polls?

Though a section of party’s central leadership believe that the change in the guard in state and Mumbai unit of the party was required, it is unlikely to be done ahead of the polls. Party insiders firmly believe that Mumbai polls cannot be contested under the leadership of its incumbent chief Mangal Prabha Lodha. They also feel the need for change of leadership at state level too.

“Being a developer, Lodha cannot raise issues related to corruption in civic body and or take the opponent leaders head on. He may keep talking about larger national issues and pull on religious line, but it would not help us in BMC polls. But instead of changing the leadership, the party may decide to give decision-making power to other leaders such as Fadnavis, Patil, Ashish Shelar among others. Similarly, the change in state leadership may not be done anytime soon,” the leader said.

Mungantiwar, however, said, “The core team takes a collective responsibility in any election the party faces.”