BJP eyes Muslim voters, to start membership drive

NEW DELHI: The Delhi BJP has decided to start a massive membership drive in assembly constituencies dominated by Muslims. The party is hoping to win these seats after improving its performance on these seats in the recent Lok Sabha elections.

According to senior BJP leaders, the minority cell of the party will soon start a membership drive in over a dozen constituencies, which they have chosen after analysing the results of the Lok Sabha elections.

The cell will hold conferences, public meetings, conduct door-to-door meetings to ensure that the anti-BJP, anti-Modi propaganda by the opposition could be neutralised among the Muslim voters. The cell, with a host of local Muslim leaders, has decided to reach out to the minority community with a comprehensive programme.

“We had worked hard earlier too and the efforts seem to have yielded results. Across all assembly segments, which are dominated by Muslims, BJP gained 5,000-25,000 votes in the Lok Sabha elections. Now, we will analyse the results of both the assembly and Lok Sabha elections to identify areas where we were lagging and work on them to get better results. We will ensure more and more people participate in the membership drive and will make party’s stand clear on the riots that took place recently in Delhi,” said Atif Rashid, president of minority cell of Delhi BJP.

Giving example of the Matia Mahal assembly segment, which is part of Chandni Chowk parliamentary constituency, a senior leader said the area is dominated by Muslims but BJP candidate Harsh Vardhan managed to get 15,453 votes against 6061 votes that they had got in 2013 assembly elections.

“We had worked hard in areas dominated by Muslims and tar- geted constituencies such as Seemapuri, Seelampur, Ghonda, Babarpur, Mustafabad, Okhla and Ballimaran. We have gained in Okhla too where party’s candidate got 39,445 votes against 23,358 votes in the assembly election. It shows party is getting the support of the Muslim population and they are believing in our agenda of positive governance,” said a senior BJP leader.

“It is considered that Muslims are a traditional votebank of the Congress but that notion doesn’t stand anymore. A number of Muslims, specially the youth, have came out in huge numbers and supported us as we stand for development,” Rashid said.

“Our minority cell held interactions and public meets to ensure more and more people came out and voted for our candidates. We will continue our effort and this time we are confident of winning seats in Muslim-dominated constituencies,” he added.