Yash More, a 23-year-old engineer in a private firm, will be voting only for the second time in an election, but has already been designated a “page pramukh” (page in-charge) by the BJP in the Assembly elections.
Every “page pramukh” is assigned one page of the voter list and he has to follow up on each name on it. “I have been assigned one page of the list for our polling booth. This has 24 names, and my responsibility is to get them out to the booth on polling day,” says Mr. More, who first voted during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
He say he is not a member or worker of the BJP, but is only helping out a relative who is in the ruling party. “As someone who is doing voluntary work, I can ask people to vote for the BJP candidate. But my main task is to get to them to the booth,” Mr. More says.
Birth of the idea
Yogesh Bhai Patel, six-time BJP MLA from the Manjalpur constituency of Vadodara, says the party came up with this idea in 2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi contested the Vadodara Lok Sabha seat, along with Varanasi. “It is their job to find out if the voters mentioned in the list continue to be voters or have they changed their location. Are they travelling out of the city on the voting day? They are responsible for finding out all such information,” Mr. Patel says.
He says Manjalpur has over 1.3 lakh voters, and he has the support of 3,000 “page pramukhs” to ensure voters come out in large numbers.
This is in addition to full-time party workers and members who work round-the-clock during elections. On an average, a “page pramukh” will handle 48 names, and the BJP has enlisted seven lakh volunteers.
Using a cricketing analogy, Mr. Patel says, “Even a Tendulkar can play and defend only three stumps at a time and not 18. The Congress is precisely trying to do that without having proper ground-level workers.”
The Congress says the much-talked-about election machinery will not be of help this election. “In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP did not have organisation in many States, but still won because of the wave. This time in Gujarat, there is an anti-BJP wave and people will vote them out,” says Ami Ravat, a Congress municipal councillor in Vadodara and a contender for party ticket.
