Lucknow: With UP elections less than a year away, BJP state leadership on Friday held its core committee meeting in Lucknow, focusing on strengthening coordination between govt and the party organisation and giving greater momentum to its month-long Sewa Sankalp Abhiyan to mark PM Modi’s birthday on Sept 17.
Because of schemes relating to housing, LPG, sanitation, financial inclusion and social security, while welfare schemes and employment-related initiatives are expected to form a major component of the youth outreach, women beneficiaries remain an important constituency for the party.
The leadership, sources said, appears keen to convert govt’s welfare footprint into sustained political engagement at the grassroots rather than waiting for the formal election campaign to begin. The meeting was attended by BJP national general secretary (organisation) BL Santhosh, UP incharge Vinod Tawde , chief minister Yogi Adityanath , deputy CMs Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak, state BJP president Pankaj Chaudhary and state general secretary (organisation) Dharampal Singh. A key thrust of the meeting was on closer coordination between the state govt and BJP organisation for implementing the Sewa Sankalp Abhiyan. The leadership stressed that the campaign should not remain confined to symbolic service activities but instead become an effective medium for reaching beneficiaries of various central and state govt schemes. BJP plans to use its organisational network to establish direct contact with beneficiaries, explain the benefits of govt programmes and expand the party’s outreach beyond its traditional support base. The emphasis on beneficiary contact is significant given BJP strategy in recent elections, where welfare delivery and direct beneficiary mobilisation emerged as important components of its campaign. Another important component of the deliberations was the mobilisation of BJP cadre for forthcoming grassroots campaigns by the party’s top leaders including PM Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and BJP national president Nitin Nabin. The objective is to ensure that the visits of the central leadership are backed by a fully activated organisational network at the booth, shakti kendra and mandal levels.