BJP Leaders Seek To Micromanage Campaign For Delhi Civic Body Polls

Nearly 4,000 party workers, including leaders from BJP-ruled states, have descended to Delhi for micromanagement of its campaign and ensure efficient voter outreach ahead of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi polls next month, party leaders said on Friday.

The BJP leaders, state unit functionaries, MLAs and civic body office bearers from UP, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand are holding regular meetings with the candidates and the party workers for "maximum impact" of the campaign for elections to 250 wards on December 4, a Delhi BJP leader said.

BJP poll strategists, including general secretary Sunil Bansal and secretary Sunil Deodhar and Delhi unit incharge Baijayant Jay Panda, are regularly holding meetings on the poll campaign, he said.

"The senior leaders of the party are also reaching out to party leaders and workers miffed with not being considered for party tickets in the polls and trying to persuade them to continue working for the party," he said.

To micromanage the poll campaign at ward level, BJP has roped in 4,000 volunteers that include former MLAs, corporators from neighbouring states Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab.

These volunteers are groomed and trained by Mr Bansal.

Former mayor Jai Prakash has been given the task to bring all party workers who are unhappy due to ticket distribution back in the campaign mode, hold drawing room meetings, target houses of opposition voters and ensure sync with the local RSS unit.

In an internal meeting held between one such batch of leaders on Thursday, each was given a bag that had documents with details of demography and problems of the ward that they have been assigned.

"Many of us make the mistake of moving around with the same set of like-minded people and friends who would anyway vote for the party. We should not do that and target the houses who are not the traditional voters," Mr Deodhar told the workers in a meeting.

He also told the party workers to not take the Sangh Parivar people for granted.

"We should not think that since they are our family, they would anyway help us... but it is our duty to reach out to people from the RSS fold and their family members for help during the polls," he said.

The Delhi BJP leaders said campaigning will pick up pace in next few days with more meetings and roadshows by senior leaders.

Roadshows in all the 14 districts have been planned on November 20 that will also be attended by senior leaders and Union ministers, they said.

There are also plans for meetings of the party president JP Nadda and Union Home Minister Amit Shah in different parts of the metropolis, they said.

Party leaders and functionaries will also reach out to non-Hindi speaking voters settled in Delhi from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Odisha, West Bengal, Northeast and other states in their pockets through 250 meetings in coming days, they said.

In the previous municipal corporation polls in 2017 the party bagged 181 wards out of 270 on which votes were polled, trouncing both the AAP and Congress.

Delhi BJP president Adesh Gupta has claimed his party will win more seats than the last corporation elections.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)