Taking the fight against Congress to the Assembly constituency level, the Opposition BJP has decided to prepare individual charge sheets against all Congress MLAs in the State based on their failure to fulfil promises and deliver services in their constituencies.
Instructions on this were given to the party State unit by national president Amit Shah at a special meeting of party legislators, MPs and office-bearers in Bengaluru on Sunday to chalk out the party’s agenda for the next two months as part of poll preparations.
Briefing reporters after the meeting, Union Minister Ananth Kumar said the party district units had been asked to prepare such charge sheets by January 16. The BJP Yuva Morcha will take up a campaign from February 15 to 22 during which the charge sheets in the form of pamphlets will reach all houses in the respective constituencies, he noted.
It is learnt that such a measure is being taken up to build on people’s sentiments with respect to local issues.
Besides this, Mr. Shah has also directed the party cadre to hold three conventions — women’s, Dalits and OBCs — in each of the Assembly constituencies during February, Mr. Kumar said. Meanwhile, he dropped clear hints that the BJP may use “Hindutva” as its main plank in the Assembly elections by remarking that the party’s strategy meeting had decided to brand the Siddaramaiah government as “anti-Hindu”.
When asked if the demand for providing separate religion status to Lingayats would eat into party’s vote base, he remarked that the BJP would go to people by branding the Siddaramaiah government as “anti-Hindu”. Accusing the government of indulging in “appeasement politics”, he said most of its policies were anti-Hindu in nature. Mr. Kumar said the meeting also adopted a resolution, accusing the Congress government of failing on all fronts, and appealing to people to help BJP return to power by winning over 150 seats of the total 224.
Earlier, Mr. Shah’s arrival in Bengaluru was delayed by nearly four hours owing to fog in New Delhi.
Appoint ‘Page Pramukhs’: Amit Shah
BJP national president Amit Shah appears to be taking the experiment of micro-management to a new level in Karnataka ahead of the polls by asking the party to appoint “Page Pramukhs” — in charge leaders for every page on the voter’s list in each polling booth.
After laying emphasis on constitution of booth-level committees during his previous visit to the State, Mr. Shah on Sunday directed the party to focus on individual sheets in voters’ list for better rapport with them.
A voters’ list in every polling booth has about 600 to 900 voters spread over nearly 20 sheets. Each sheet would have 20 to 30 voters. This would mean that each page in charge leader will get to handle only 20 to 30 voters. It is being said that the BJP had tried such a micro-management strategy in Gujarat too.
