The BJP is in its full fervor to contest the upcoming Rajasthan elections. Party National President, Amit Shah will be reaching out to people in a statewide tour in 9 districts in 3-weeks. The current government is leaving no stone unturned to win the people’s confidence. The Rajasthan BJP has taken several measures to ensure that the people vote for them in the upcoming assembly election.
The BJP’s strategy of appointing ‘Page Pramukhs’ and ‘Half-Page Pramukhs’ is to focus on effective booth management. The ‘Page Pramukhs’ are people who are selected from each page of the voter list of each polling booth in a specific constituency. The responsibility of the ‘page-pramukh’ is to make sure that they reach out to other voters on their page and spread the party’s message. They also ensure that the voters face no problem in reaching polling booths on poll day. BJP is considering it as a masterstroke if they are able to pull it off. Regarding the effectiveness of appointing Pramukh a Rajasthan BJP leader said, ”The party has decided to have two pramukhs for each page. Since every page has a front and a back, we will appoint a pramukh for each side. This is being done to intensively and directly reach out to each voter. This strategy was used in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and the North East. The results are apparent”.
The BJP has also segregated the 200 assembly constituencies into three categories, A, B and C. The first category includes those seats where party has won the maximum seats and has a strong foothold. “There are about 70-80 seats where the party has rarely lost and these constituencies form the A category”, a BJP leader said. The second category is of those seats where there are chances of both victory and loss and the C category includes those constituencies where the party presence is weak. He further added, ”There are about 100 seats where the party has won as well as lost the elections in the past. In some of these seats, the margin of victory or loss has been very narrow. In the C category, the BJP has included about 20 seats where the party candidates have lost successively in the past two or three elections”.
The BJP’s main focus is on the B and C category constituencies and they aim to convert B to A category and C to B category. As the BJP fears the anti-incumbency wave and Vasundhara Raje facing lack of confidence by some community, it is working towards more on the ground level work. In the recent bypoll election BJP had lost its seat from Ajmer and Alwar. BJP has also roped in national leaders to improve its chances to make a comeback in the state. A 16 member election committee has been set up in the state headed by the state party chief Madan Lal Saini. The committee has Arjun Shekhawat as the convenor, Vasundhara Raje and two other union ministers. Amit Shah has stated that the upcoming elections in the states of Rajasthan, Mizoram, and Madhya Pradesh will set the tone for 2019 general elections. He has also appealed to the party workers to work for the Prime Minister and symbol of lotus.