Facing an anti-incumbency wave, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is looking to add strength to its performance this Lok Sabha election by tasking nearly 92,000 booth monitoring teams with the responsibility of increasing voter turnout.
As part of its ‘Booth Majboot to Party Majboot’ campaign, the party is looking to take the message of the achievements of its governance to the last voter and increase the turnout by 5% to 8% in urban areas of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). Senior party leaders said that in the last phase of polling they are likely to add strength to the existing one-plus-twenty-five formation — a leader in-charge of 25 workers — at nearly 92,000 booths in urban and rural Maharashtra.
Senior leader and BJP spokesperson Keshav Upadhyay said, “As an incumbent government, it is our right to make every effort to increase the voter count. As part of this micro planning, we wish to take our achievements to the last voter in every constituency and we have deputed a one-plus twenty-five formation at each booth.”
The ‘Booth Majboot to Party Majboot’ campaign is the brainchild of the party’s Lok Sabha Sanchalak Samiti, which has been assigned with the task of strengthening the lowest unit in the electoral battle: the party’s booths. Senior party functionaries said that each booths in Mumbai accommodate up to 1,500 voters, while 50 to 100 voters from each list at the booth is assigned to a worker.
Additionally, the panna pramukhs assist the one-plus-twenty-five formation in cleaning up the voter list. The booth workers have been tasked with cleaning up the electoral list, canvassing for the local candidate and holding events to ensure that the party’s achievements reach the last-mile voter. “We are confident that the party’s work is reaching the masses and that the people will choose Prime Minister Narendra Modi again with a thumping majority,” said Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
With the booth strategy the elections in full throttle, the party expects the voter turnout to increase by at least 8% in urban areas. “I have 950-odd booths in my constituency [Charkop] and hope to increase the voter turnout by 10% at least in key pockets. This is our wish. Going by the support Narendra Modi ji has among the masses, this does not look impossible,” said BJP MLA Yogesh Sagar, who is also the party in-charge of poll preparation for Pune.
