Shah tells partymen to seek votes in PM’S name
HUBBALLI: Ahead of the upcoming Karnataka assembly elections, BJP president Amit Shah has asked party cadres to seek votes in the name of PM Narendra Modi and has also finalised the party’s social media strategy.
Shah, whose two-day tour of the southern state ended on Wednesday, has tweaked his panna pramukh (in charge of a page in the electoral rolls) strategy for Karnataka by concentrating efforts at the booth level.
“I appeal to workers, don’t look at the candidate. Just look at the lotus symbol (the party’s symbol) and Modi’s photo,” Shah had said while addressing booth workers in Bantwal in Dakshina Kannada district on Tuesday.
“Your duty is not to win the assembly constituency, it is to win your booth. When many such booths are won, we will win the election,” he had said.
There are around 56,000 polling booths in the state, the Election Commission data shows. A booth typically has around 1,200 voters, depending on the population of an area. Karnataka has around 490 million voters.
BS Yeddyurappa is the BJP’S CM pick in its bid to win the state from the Congress.
Spreading Shah’s message, BJP organisation secretary Arun Kumar on Wednesday asked workers to interact with voters and categorise them as A+, A, B, and C in accordance with their support or lack of it for the party.
‘A+’ are the hardcore BJP sup- porters who will vote come what may, ‘A’ are ardent supporters, ‘B’ are those who are sympathetic to the party and could be convinced to vote for it. And those who don’t support the party fall in the fourth category.
The party is taking its boothlevel approach to social media as well.
Shah on Wednesday spelt out a 23-point strategy in a meeting with the party’s social media team in Udupi.
Each person was asked to administer at least five Whatsapp groups to push the party’s campaign, said a BJP leader who attended the meeting.
While the party termed the poll strategy as novel, Narendar Pani, a political analyst and faculty at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, said there was a danger of the BJP undermining its local leaders. “In elections in Karnataka, and in India as a whole, there is a certain loyalty to the local candidate that could resist such centralised attempts to manage elections,” Pani said.