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BJP women wing drafts roadmap for 2024 elections
The Bharatiya Janata Party's mahila morcha is drafting a road map for the 2024 general elections to convert women's support for Prime Minister Modi into votes for the party. The party will focus on women voters in poll-bound states, sensitising them about welfare schemes and launching programs for their empowerment.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s mahila morcha or women’s wing has drafted a road map for the 2024 general elections to convert the support of women for Prime Minister Narendra Modi into votes for the party, the outfit’s chief Vanathi Srinivasan said on Thursday.
The wing also has the challenging task of retaining women votes despite opposition parties trying to hive off support with promises of monetary assistance, free travel in public transport and subsidised utilities .
The first phase of the road map will be rolled out in the five poll-bound states of Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and Rajasthan, she added.
Srinivasan, who is also spearheading the outreach, said the party will focus on women voters in poll-bound states to sensitise them about the welfare schemes of the BJP government and launch specific programmes to help in their economic and social empowerment.
“The first part of the road map is outreach. We will connect with women across all assembly segments and in each of the five states through specific outreach methods, such as the Bhajanmandalis and the self help groups (SHG) in Rajasthan. In Madhya Pradesh, we organised a special Raksha Bandhan event where the beneficiaries of schemes such as Ladli Behna were asked to send rakhis to the PM and the chief minister,” she said.
Starting November, the morcha will organise ghar-ghar sampark or door-to-door campaign covering at least 100 households in each polling booth. Town halls will be organised in 50 smart cities that will have senior party leaders, ministers and law makers address issues related to governance.
“The focus of these meetings and outreach programmes is women-centric, because they have been at the core of the government’s plans and programmes,” she said.
Women voters have been identified as a critical constituency by the party. Political analysts believe their support has been instrumental in shaping favourable poll outcomes for the BJP. Unease over issues such as price rise among women voters was also underlined as a reason for the party’s losses in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka.
To a question on how the party will address concerns over price rise and inflation, Srinivasan said, “The government is doing what it can; recently, the price of cooking gas was slashed. We will explain the international and domestic reasons for prices spiralling and what the government has done from time to time to contain it.”
The BJP is hoping that its free ration scheme for disadvantaged sections and subsidised health care through ASHA and anganwadi workers will blunt the anger over price rise that has been underlined as a serious challenge for the government through the party’s internal feedback mechanism.
With political parties competing to offer sops to women, the BJP thinks it has to work doubly hard to retain its women voters. Srinivasan said the party has decided to explain the nuances of financial implications of poll promises and their long-term impact.
“We have the examples of Punjab, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh making promises that were not kept. We will draw a comparison between what we promised and delivered and what the Opposition did,” she said.
The morcha has proposed skill development programmes for women to help them financially. For instance, it is looking at imparting marketing skills to women who run cottage industries or are involved in the production of textiles or handicrafts to help them create a market for their products, Srinivas said.
The morcha is also gearing to counter the Opposition’s promises with arguments about the economy.
“We tell them just as a family’s resources are managed; we must look at the country’s resources in the same way. If we provide 10 crore new LPG connections, there will be some kind of expense incurred too. Similarly, for the economic empowerment of women, the government provided SHGs as much as ₹20 lakh without collateral,” she said.
To a separate question on speculation that the government may introduce the women’s reservation bill in Parliament’s upcoming special session, Srinivasan said the BJP was able to politically empower women and is the only party that can roll out the intervention.
“The BJP has given a new direction to women’s politics and leadership. There is 33% reservation for women within the organisation. We have seen phenomenal changes at the grassroots level with the roll out of reservation for women in local body and panchayat. The party is committed to women’s reservation,” she said.
