The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has crossed the two-crore mark in eight days of its nationwide membership drive that kicked off on September 2 with Prime Minister Narendra Modi renewing his membership. The feat was achieved on a day the BJP called a meeting of nine states to review their performance so far in the membership drive. This was the first phase of performance review by the BJP and will be followed by similar review meetings of the remaining states next week.
FRESH 75%-80% TARGET
On Tuesday, the BJP also set an ambitious target for states. “We have asked them to enrol 75-80 per cent of the voters who voted for us,” said BJP general secretary Vinod Tawde.
The party called the Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Karnataka leadership to review their performance in a meeting chaired by party president JP Nadda and attended by Union Home Minister Amit Shah and General Secretary (Organisation) BL Santhosh. Each state was represented by their respective party presidents, general secretaries, the state in-charge of the membership drive, and his or her team.
The BJP, however, evaded answering which state was leading, with Tawde saying: “Right now, we have the total number. It can only be ascertained after we count according to assembly constituencies and states.” However, a BJP source told News18 that the party is in possession of state-wise breakups but doesn’t want to announce who is leading till the drive is over, lest it demoralise others.
MODI’S WISHLIST
In Tuesday’s meeting, states were also asked about arrangements they had made to ensure the suggestions put forth by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 2 during his interaction with the BJP leadership were executed.
The prime minister had suggested that the BJP start with ‘C grade polling booths’ — the weakest ones — and asked the party to focus on aspirational blocks, booths, and border villages to target youth in the 18-25 age bracket. Emphasis must also be laid on tribal areas.
During his speech, PM Modi also told the BJP leadership that the membership drive will see the implementation of 33 per cent reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. He also urged party members to enrol as many women as possible as members and future leaders of the BJP.
“In today’s meeting, it was stressed how to make this drive all-encompassing in the coming days and how to implement the wishes of the prime minister. Both party president and the home minister called leaders concerned (from different states) separately to discuss it with them,” said Tawde.
The nine states were asked to maintain a daily data sheet of targets and accomplishments. All nine state presidents have been asked to ensure their state membership team reaches out to those areas where the BJP expected to win but did not do well in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election.
TALL ASK FROM UP & BIHAR
Sources say Nadda particularly asked Dilip Jaiswal, the new Bihar BJP president who took over from Samrat Chaudhary in July-end, to organise multiple events to make the membership drive a success by enrolling at least one crore members in a state where the BJP’s power has dwarfed after JDU support to the NDA government became vital.
BJP’s Lok Sabha setback in Uttar Pradesh — where it won only 33 seats in a big drop from the 63 seats it won in 2019 — was in special focus on Tuesday, say sources. The central leadership has asked the state BJP for at least two crore members from the state.
Sources say both Bihar and UP BJP presidents have been given specific tasks to meet the steep target set for the two biggest Hindi heartland states. Jaiswal has been asked to dot Bihar with membership drive advertisements ranging from huge hoardings to small wall writings. Meanwhile, Bhupendra Chaudhary has been asked to mount an aggressive social media campaign to popularise the drive in every nook and corner of the state.
BENGAL LAGGING BEHIND
While most states are competing to outsmart each other, sources say West Bengal — which was not part of Tuesday’s meeting — is lagging behind as the focus of the state leadership has been on organising multiple protests on the issue of the RG Kar Hospital rape and murder which has put the TMC in a spot.
For context, in the first eight days of the membership drive, Madhya Pradesh has been able to ensure 41 lakh BJP memberships. However, Bengal is a little short of 11 lakh during the same period.
NEW MEMBERS VS RENEWALS
While the BJP is bragging of hitting the two-crore mark in just eight days, a big chunk of this is renewals of membership as it is mandatory for every BJP worker to renew their membership every six years. This rule also applies to the national president, according to the BJPs’ constitution.
In fact, the drive started with PM Modi renewing his membership. JP Nadda went and handed over the renewals to party patriarchs Lal Krishna Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi.
At this point, it is unclear how many of the two crore members are fresh members.
