BackTeam Modi takes charge of BJP’s 2014 campaign
Special four-member cell to be headed by Modi confidante Amit Shah to target first-time voters
Premium(Pradeep Gaur/Mint)
New Delhi: Readying for polls under the leadership of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday announced the team that will guide the party in the run-up to the general election scheduled for May next year.
Acknowledging the altered demography of India, the main opposition party constituted a special cell to target first-time voters, which it estimates to be about one-fifth of the total electorate of more than 700 million. The four-member team to oversee this will be headed by Amit Shah, a close confidante of Modi and the party’s chief campaign manager in Uttar Pradesh.
The BJP, which recently warned of a snap poll, has set up 20 committees to strategize and implement its campaign plan.
A 12-member central election committee will include all its top leaders including former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who has not made a public appearance in the last few years; L.K. Advani; party chief Rajnath Singh; and former party presidents M. Venkaiah Naidu and Nitin Gadkari, apart from leaders of the opposition in Parliament, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley. The BJP’s chief ministers will also be part of the team.
The allocation of the responsibilities, made in consultation with its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, seems to be a carefully crafted balancing act that accommodates the various lobbies within the party. While senior leader Murli Manohar Joshi has been asked to head the manifesto team for the 2014 general election, Swaraj and Jaitley will look after the publicity wing. Shah and Sudhanshu Trivedi will also be part of the campaign through electronic and print media. The party will begin its campaign, which will include at least 100 public rallies across the country, from August, said BJP spokesperson Ananth Kumar. This grassroots campaign will be headed by the party’s youngest general secretary Varun Gandhi, who is the cousin of Congress party vice-president Rahul Gandhi. In addition, the party also proposes to undertake events to mobilize farmers, tribals, women, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to expand support among these sections.
The party will release a vision document, which will be prepared under the supervision of Gadkari, and a charge-sheet that will list the corruption scandals and other failures of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, Kumar said.
The manifesto committee will include Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Prem Kumar Dhumal, Satyapal Manik and Mahesh Chandra Sharma.
The party, which has signalled that it will focus on the youth, especially urban voters, has appointed Piyush Goyal to head a team that will manage its social media presence.
There is a special team for campaigning in the North-East while a panel consisting of Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Prakash Javadekar will mobilize support among intellectuals. Party president Singh has also asked Gadkari to play a key role in the electioneering in Delhi, which will be going to the polls later this year.
Sandeep Shastri, pro vice-chancellor at Jain University and director of its Centre for Research in Social Sciences and Education in Bangalore, said the BJP is “undoubtedly" trying to focus its campaign on youth and fresh voters. “The BJP knows it very well that in order to bid for power, it is critical to capture the imagination of the young voters. What Modi has been trying to do is to capitalize on the youth disenchantment. In Modi’s speeches, he tries to tell them that he will address their concerns. Whether he will do it or not is secondary here. He is making the right noises," Shastri said.
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