Bittu Chauhan checking his list in Delhi's Krishna Nagar constituency.
If the exit polls that predicted a victory of the Aam Aadmi Party in the race for Delhi got it right, then the work of people like BJP's Baldev Nagpal and Bittu Chauhan could have gone in vain.
On Saturday, most exit polls gave AAP a comfortable majority. The BJP, they said, would come second.
The BJP have pooh-poohed the opinion polls. The party had been working towards a high turnout, which, by conventional wisdom, heralds a change. And today's turnout has been a record 67%.
This was where Baldev Nagpal and Bittu Chauhan came in. They were the footsoldiers whom the BJP entrusted with the task of getting people to the polling booths.
Mr Nagpal is a "
panna pramukh" - literally, the "page in-charge" - of East Delhi's Krishna Nagar, who has to get all the people on his list to vote.
Standing on the street this afternoon, he was looking methodically through his sheaf of papers. "Till 3 pm, around 36% people voted in my locality. I have to make sure the rest also step out to vote," he said.
Not too far away, in another lane, Bittu Chauhan and his team were pounding the pavement. He was of a "senior rank" - a "booth
pramukh".
Panna pramukhs and booth
pramukhs are part of the grass-root strategy that BJP President Amit Shah used to great effect - not once but five times -- in Gujarat. It is being replicated in Delhi in hopes of rich dividends.
In Krishna Nagar constituency alone, the BJP has over 1,600
panna pramukhs. Across the city, the over-all number of booth pramukhs is a whopping 2 lakh.
In the run up to voting day, each
panna pramukh had to make contact with the 30 families listed on their page at least four times. And on D-day? "I think we will manage to get 90% people in my lists to polling booths," said Mr Chauhan.