BJP to intensify public outreach in Telangana

Three days before the NEC meeting, the party’s national leaders made extensive tours of the 119 assembly constituencies in Telangana to assess the party’s strengths and weaknesses at the grassroots level and also to find out how far the schemes of the Narendra Modi government are reaching the people.

Fresh from the success of the Bharatiya Janata Party national executive meeting held on July 2 and 3, the party’s Telangana unit has decided to step up its public outreach activity more aggressively to gain more ground in the state ahead of next year’s assembly elections.

Fresh from the success of the BJP national executive meeting held on July 2 and 3, the party’s Telangana unit has decided to step up its public outreach activity more aggressively to gain more ground in the state ahead of next year’s assembly elections. (PTI)

Three days before the NEC meeting, the party’s national leaders including former chief ministers, union ministers and top BJP leaders made extensive tours of the 119 assembly constituencies in Telangana to assess the party’s strengths and weaknesses at the grassroots level and also to find out how far the schemes of the Narendra Modi government are reaching the people.

“Now, the party has decided to take the parliamentary constituency as a unit to intensify the public outreach and win the confidence of the electorate. The strategy was discussed at the BJP office bearers’ meeting held in Hyderabad on Tuesday,” BJP state general secretary G Premender Reddy said.

As part of the strategy, a batch of Union ministers will be touring the parliamentary constituencies in Telangana in batches, assess the party situation, identify the loopholes if any and suggest measures to strengthen the party in the constituencies.

Named as “Lok Sabha Pravas Yojana” programme, these Union ministers will tour Lok Sabha constituencies in the last week of July. Barring Karimnagar, Nizamabad and Secunderabad, for which a separate strategy would be chalked out, the Union ministers would tour the remaining 14 parliamentary constituencies.

“They would spend three days and two nights in each parliamentary constituency, hold meeting with the party leaders and cadre, and also interact with the people to understand their issues and the unfulfilled promises of the Telangana Rashtra Samith government,” Reddy said.

The 14 Lok Sabha constituencies have been divided into four clusters – Adilabad, Hyderabad, Mahabubnagar and Warangal, which would be looked after by each Union minister. For Adilabad cluster, Union minister for fisheries Purshottam Khodabhai Rupala will be in-charge; for Hyderabad, minister for parliamentary affairs Prahlad Venkatesh Joshi will be the in-charge.

While Union minister for heavy industries Mahendra Nath Pandey will be the in-charge for Mahbubnagar cluster, Union minister of state for north-eastern region B L Verma, will be heading the party work in the Warangal cluster.

These four in-charge ministers would be supported by a couple of other Union ministers in each cluster, who would also be touring the constituencies. For instance, in the Adilabad cluster that comprises Peddapalli, Zaheerabad and Medak constituencies, union ministers like Nirmala Sitharaman and others will be touring.

Similarly, in the Hyderabad cluster, Union ministers Jyotiraditya Scindia and Devi Singh Chouhan will tour. In Mahabubnagar cluster, Kailash Chowdary, B L Varma and Rao Inderjit Singh will tour.

“This public outreach programme will continue till the assembly elections in the state next year and beyond,” the BJP general secretary added.