Two Lok Sabha poll phases done, BJP overhauls mass-contact strategy

With voting already completed by a third of the Lok Sabha constituencies, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has overhauled its election campaign strategy.

Alongside banking on the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the populist schemes of the Union government, senior leaders of the BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have decided to completely change their grassroots campaign strategy for the five remaining phases.

For at least the past 10 years — that is, since the 2014 polls, when the BJP won the general elections and Narendra Modi became the prime minister — the strategy has been to build an army of volunteers and BJP workers who work as Panna Pramukhs. They are in charge of contacting at least 60 voters in a polling booth. However, very recently, a need was felt to change the election campaign strategy at the booth level.

New strategy

“The BJP and RSS network has divided all the polling booths into 12 lakh units, and they have identified and trained the manpower for the polling booth exercises in the past few months,” Dilip Deodhar, Nagpur-based expert and observer on RSS, told The Federal. According to the latest data from the Election Commission, there are 10.48 lakh polling booths in the country with over 96.8 crore voters.

To further simplify the election campaign, the BJP has divided voters in each polling station under different heads: women, first-time voters, young voters, people from Northeast, Sikhs, general voters, scheduled caste, scheduled tribe, people benefitting from populist programmes, and farmers. According to the Election Commission, there cannot be more than 1,500 voters in a polling booth.

According to the decision taken by the BJP, only one member of each family can take part under one category in the massive contact programme launched by the party in every polling station. “It has been decided that two or more members of the same family cannot be included in the 10 different heads that have been identified. This is to ensure that the party workers reach out to more people,” said a senior BJP leader on the condition of anonymity.

“If we talk about Delhi alone, we will be organizing at least one lakh such meetings under these 10 heads before the polls. Once the contact programmes are completed, the last four days of campaigning will focus on door-to-door campaigns and management of the polling booth, which basically means to motivate people to vote for the BJP,” the leader added.

Old method

While the new method is more meticulously designed to profile all voters in every polling station, in the old method of mass contact programme, the BJP leadership divided each polling station between 15 and 20 Panna Pramukhs who would be in charge of a list of 60 voters.

The method of giving a list of 60 voters to every booth-level BJP worker was first used in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections. After its success in the Assembly polls, it was implemented nationwide in the 2014 general elections, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi won the elections and formed the first full-majority BJP government at the Centre.

Although the focus of the present mass contact programme is to further micromanage every polling booth and profile every voter, the door-to-door campaign will only be carried out in the last four days of the election campaign.

Ram temple

With the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya in January being one of the core issues of the BJP, senior party leaders said invitations for the consecration ceremony were given to at least 19 crore families, who were asked to pray in their homes or at the local temple near their homes when the consecration ceremony was taking place in Ayodhya.

“These 19 crore families have been contacted, and they are part of the BJP’s campaign strategy. It is fair to assume that most of the people in these families could possibly vote for the BJP. We are requesting these families to not only ensure that they vote but also urge their friends and family members to vote for the BJP,” said Deodhar.

Simultaneously, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad is also running a nationwide campaign across the country, which has been named “Jo Ram Ko Leke Aaye Hai, Hum Unko Leke Aayenge”, which means people who brought Lord Rama to Ayodhya will be voted to power in the country.

“We have started the campaign to reach out to people and motivate them to vote for those who are associated with the Ram temple and those who took part in the consecration ceremony. The decline in voting percentage is a cause for concern, and we want to ensure that more people come out to vote. We are asking people to cancel all their programmes on polling day and cast their votes before doing any other work,” Vinod Bansal, national spokesperson of the VHP, told The Federal.

Focus on women

Working on the Centre’s decision to focus on the votes of women, who comprise nearly 50 per cent of the population, the RSS is running a special drive to train women who want to become part of public life and politics.

To prepare female leaders across the country, the RSS has already trained 5.62 lakh women in the past year. Although the Union government passed the Women’s Reservation Bill only in December 2023, the RSS has been preparing woman leaders in its affiliated organization for more than two decades.

“It is true that women are not part of the RSS but they are very active in all 36 affiliated organizations of the RSS. The work to train women for public life and also for organizational work started more than two decades ago. But in the past year alone, RSS has completed training 5.62 lakh women to take part in public life,” Deodhar added.

Political analysts believe that a fall in voting percentage is a cause for concern for not only the BJP but all political parties, and these are measures to ensure that more people vote in favour of the saffron party.

“The BJP and RSS election campaigns work like machines. The BJP has no shortage of manpower and workers because of RSS and its affiliated organizations and resources. Most RSS workers help the BJP in the poll campaigns, and these people work for free because they are ideologically committed,” Ashutosh Kumar, political science professor at Panjab University, told The Federal.