Satya Singh Parihar, the 72-year-old Block Congress Committee president in Bastar, has rarely worked as hard as he has over the past few months.
“The instructions came from the highest command that we have to put in place booth, sector and zone level committees under blocks,” said Mr. Parihar, who has been associated with the Congress for over five decades.
“We used to have booth committees earlier also, but this time the party wanted everything on paper,” said Mr. Parihar as he took out a slim file of about a dozen white sheets titled
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On the condition that the names of the booth will not be disclosed, Mr. Parihar showed us the papers.
It had names of all the paras , or localities, on the first page. The second page had a list of 21 Congress members, including a coordinator who handles social media in the respective booth area, with their names and coordinates.
“I think we are ahead in the booth management this time,” said Vinod Verma, a former journalist.
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Manish Gupta, a senior journalist of Chhattisgarh, thinks BJP too has done a good job, as it has done every year. “They have this concept of Panna Pramukhs in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh. They have now introduced this in Chhattisgarh for the first time,” he said.
A BJP official said each of them are given charge of about 50 votes.
PR work
“The person is expected to do engage in a public relations exercise to ensure that the voters come to vote for us.” But besides the Panna Pramukhs, the BJP in Chhattisgarh has an organised booth and vote management network headed by both regular party activists and dedicated RSS Pracharaks. This time, it had a team of 12 central election observers, mainly from the RSS, for 12 seats in Bastar.
The BJP has similar teams across the State “in a cluster of seats,” said Mr. Gupta, who closely monitors the BJP.