BJP wants cadre to promote insurance cover as Rakhi gift

LUCKNOW: This Raksha Bandhan, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wants its cadres in Uttar Pradesh to promote a novel Rakhi gift to sisters – Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana! The BJP’s national vice president and party’s UP in-charge Om Mathur, who held a meeting with party office bearers here on Tuesday, has asked senior leaders from the state to get the cadres to engage in this task. The party also wants to promote the accidental and life insurance schemes launched by the Modi government among the people.

The party cadres are expected to take up the task of promoting

THE BJP LAWMAKERS, BOTH IN LOK SABHA AND THE VIDHAN SABHA, ARE TO BE ROPED IN TO HARD SELL THE PARTY SCHEMES

the scheme in the right earnest. Union HRD minister Smriti Irani has already set the ball rolling by paying the first insurance instalment of 25000 women in Amethi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi. Other BJP leaders are likely to follow suit.

The BJP is hoping that the Raksha Bandhan outreach pro- gramme would also help the party establish rural connect as the insurance scheme for women, the party strategists estimate, would be a “hit” in the villages.

“This scheme has a social and emotional connect. For people in rural areas especially, such gestures mean a lot,” says a BJP insider. So while the party is encouraging people to “gift” the insurance cover to their sisters, moneyed party cadres are being “urged” to do their bit by paying premiums of poor women; a process that would aid the party in maintaining ‘sampark and samvaad’ (connect and dialogue). The BJP lawmakers, both in Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabha, are to be roped in to hard sell the party schemes.