Eyeing 2024 Lok Sabha polls, BJP steps up 'Nation with NaMo' drive

A strategic group that drives the Bharatiya Janata Party’s election campaign has launched a recruitment drive, identifying booths in the country where it needs to expand further.

It’s learnt the drive will prepare a strategy for the 2024 general elections and the forthcoming Assembly elections.

Interestingly, this drive — Nation with NaMo — comes with two years left for the General Elections and the country’s main opposition party, Congress, is still struggling to set its house in order.

The ‘Nation with NaMo’ that calls itself a political consultancy group and functions as an extended poll-campaign organ of the BJP is now hiring poll managers, political analysts and content writers in multiple states, where it needs to expand its footprint.

The group put up its job postings on LinkedIn, Fidanto and Iimjobs.com and other recruitment sites.

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For instance in West Bengal, the party is hiring for the post of associates, senior associates and managers to work as part of project teams in the campaign.

Their role will be to develop political and campaign strategies for the client (political party), plan and manage end-to-end execution of campaign strategies, coordinate with campaign teams, and manage stakeholder engagements.

The minimum qualification for the job is a degree from a tier-1 academic institution. Political consulting or similar experience is an added advantage.

For employment in Bengal, language proficiency in Bengali is a must, according to the job offer posted on the sites. Job offerings are for contractual roles till April 2024, that is till the end of the next Lok Sabha polls.

In the first phase, the organisation will recruit around 500 youth across the country to mainly work at the booth level, sources said.

The ‘Nation with NaMo’ claims itself as an autonomous not-for-profit company, but many believe it is funded by the BJP itself. The group’s source of funding was questioned by the TMC leader Derek O’Brien in Parliament ahead of the 2019 elections.

The BJP, however, denies having any direct link with the group.

The recruitment drive comes close on the heels of the BJP identifying around 73,000 booths in the country, mostly in Southern states, where it has no presence. In West Bengal, it has identified hundreds of such booths in southern parts of the state.

The BJP has marked them as “weak booths” and formed a four-member committee to work out a roadmap to expand the party’s support base there.

The “weak booth committee” is headed by BJP national vice-president B J Panda. Other members of the committee are party’s national vice-president Dilip Ghosh, national general secretary CT Ravi and party’s SC Morcha president Lal Singh Arya.

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The committee already held a few rounds of meetings and offered suggestions to party national president J P Nadda, who has earlier this month, as per the recommendation of the panel, entrusted 100 booths to each of the party MLA.

“There are over 10 lakh booths in the country. In almost all the booths, barring those identified as weak booths, we have a strong organisational presence. We are drawing up strategies to make our presence felt even in the weak booths,” said a member of the committee.

He said the committee will present its strategy blueprint in the ensuing three-day meeting of the party’s office-bearers from all across the country to be held in Jaipur from May.

The meeting will prepare a strategy for the 2024 general elections as well as for the forthcoming assembly elections.

Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh will go to poll later this year while elections are scheduled next year in Tripura, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Telangana.