The Bengal unit of the BJP has assigned its leaders to reach out to 70,000-odd rural booths across Bengal within a month to campaign on various central schemes to counter Trinamul’s "narrative of deprivation" by the Narendra Modi government and underscore its “achievements”, especially the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
A senior BJP leader said although the drive has been named “Gram Cholo (Let’s go to the villages)”, and is part of a party’s policy applied for all the states, it assumes significance in Bengal where the booth-level organisation is still a challenge for the saffron ecosystem, and apparently, Trinamul was successful in pitching its narrative that Bengal was deprived of central funds.
“This outreach to 70,000 booths is vital for the party to counter Trinamul’s narrative of deprivation against the Centre. Our mission is to let people know that the Narendra Modi government gave funds to Bengal a few times more than the previous UPA government did, under government schemes,” said a BJP leader in Calcutta.
Shah from a rally in Calcutta in November last year turned up with statistics to show how the Narendra Modi government at the Centre sanctioned funds multiple times of what the UPA government had given the Mamata Banerjee government.
He said that the decade-long UPA government, which Mamata supported as a cabinet minister and later as chief minister of Bengal, sanctioned Rs 2,00,000 crore, but Modi in his nine years sanctioned Rs 6,70,000 crore, which is 3.5 times the amount.
A source said that all these efforts were aimed at countering Trinamul’s "deprivation narrative".
Trinamul leaders including chief minister Mamata Banerjee mount regular attacks on the Narendra Modi government with accusations of stopping the flow of central funds worth Rs 1.15 lakh crore.
“We will let people know about the welfare schemes of the Narendra Modi government. The people should know that most of the schemes like construction of rural dwelling units or free LPG connections are contributed by the Union government, not the state government,” said Suresh Shaw, a BJP district general secretary in Hooghly.
As part of the Gram cholo drive, the party leaders will reach out to the booths from January 26, which will continue till February 29. The leaders will stay overnight in different villages and submit reports to the state leadership over organisational status and required political steps to be taken at the particular booth.
During their visits to Bengal, top BJP leaders like national president J.P. Nadda or Union home minister Amit Shah repeatedly asked the Bengal leaders to amplify its activities on the grounds by strengthening the booth committees.
The leaders in the districts were asked to prepare a plan to visit each of the booths in 42 Lok Sabha seats before they started visiting the villages.
“The leaders will start visiting villages from January 30,” the leader added.
According to the plan, the BJP leaders have set three targets for its rank and file to ensure before the Lok Sabha polls, through this outreach drive.
First, a senior party leader who will stay overnight at the house of a party functionary in a particular booth will check whether the party’s booth committee is functional there. If there are any lapses in the organisation, he would send a detailed report to the state about the organisational crisis in the area.
Second, the leader along with the local party functionaries will reach out to potential voters to let them know about the welfare schemes introduced by the Narendra Modi government.
Third, he will campaign about the achievements of the Narendra Modi government related to the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
