Ahead of the two-day Bharatiya Janata Party’s national executive committee meeting here from January 20, party’s president Amit Shah is set to visit the city on January 3.
According to party sources, Mr. Shah will be here to review the progress of the ongoing membership drive under which the party State unit has been given a target of enrolling 80 lakh members. Mr. Shah has reportedly asked the party State unit to expand base at the grassroots-level by enrolling a minimum of 200 members from different communities and cross-sections of society in each of the polling booths. This constitutes 20 to 30 per cent of the entire voter population, as normally a polling booth will have 500 to 800 voters.
His visit is expected to get the party geared for its proposed national office-bearers’ meeting in the city on January 19 and the subsequent national executive and the BJP, which was hitherto busy with Assembly elections to various States, is now getting ready to give full attention to the Congress-ruled Karnataka.
Interestingly, in what could affect the power equations among top State leaders, Mr. Shah has asked the party to break the “caste barrier” and grow beyond caste forces by reaching out to all categories of people in large numbers.