With only around six months left for state polls, the Trinamul and BJP leadership have drawn up plans to reach out to people, listen to them and prepare reports for the party leadership so that further strategies can be drawn up for the 54 Assembly seats in the region that can seal the fate of these political forces.

Trinamul is all set to launch its “Bangadhwani Yatra”, a campaign believed to have been planned by poll strategist Prashant Kishor in the region, starting from Jalpaiguri.

A statewide campaign, “Bangadhwani Yatra,” will start in north Bengal from Jalpaiguri civic area.

“Initially, our party workers will reach out to around one-and-half lakh people who dwell in 25 wards of the town,” said Chandan Bhowmik, a district coordinator of Trinamul Jalpaiguri.

For the programme, the town has been divided into eight zones. Teams, comprising six-seven members (there will be Trinamul workers as well as members from Prashant Kishor’s team) will move to households, tea stalls, parks and other places where residents assemble regularly and will also meet prominent residents of the wards.

“The teams will even visit houses of supporters of other political parties. The idea is to collect their feedback with regard to social welfare schemes, development works and policies of the Mamata Banerjee government. Also, the teams will check out whether people, who are prospective beneficiaries of the social schemes, have received those benefits. Altogether, it would be a sort of a survey,” Bhowmik added.

BJP leaders have instructed their seven MPs in north Bengal to visit all the mandals or zones spread across all Assembly segments of their respective parliamentary constituencies. For the past few days, a number of central and state leaders of BJP were stationed in Siliguri where they attended meetings organised by the party that intends to grab at least 50 of the 54 Assembly seats.

On Saturday, these leaders asked the MPs to visit different areas of their constituency and collect information about the party’s support base, local issues and peoples’ opinion about the BJP.

“The MPs have been told to visit each mandal of their constituency within the next 10 days or so and intensify their communication with party leaders and workers as well as with common people. They have been also advised to spend nights in each Assembly segment of their Lok Sabha constituency to understand the pulse of the voters and get an idea about the party's activities, right down to the micro level,” said a BJP insider.

After their visit, each MP will have to submit a report on their findings to the party leadership, based on which new strategies to galvanise support and plug critical gaps will be framed.

In recent times, this is the second decision made by the BJP to engage people for feedback from Assembly seats.

A couple of days back, the BJP had also decided to depute “bistaraks” or special observers, one for each Assembly constituency, to find out if the guidelines laid down by the central and state leadership were being implemented in the grassroots by local leaders and understand the voters’ pulse.

Additional reporting by our Jalpaiguri correspondent