BJP MANIFESTO PANEL TO FORM 15 SUB-PANELS
SAFFRON PARTY WILL CROWDSOURCE ITS ELECTION DOCUMENT
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will crowdsource its sankalp patra, or manifesto, for the national elections. It will hold events across the country over the next few months to get inputs from different sets of voters for the purpose, according to two BJP leaders.
Union home minister Rajnath Singh-led Manifesto Committee of the BJP decided to form 15 subpanels to reach out to the different group of voters at its first meeting at the party headquarters in Delhi on Sunday.
Amit Shah, the BJP chief, and the party’s general secretary, Ram Madhav, were among those who attended the meeting. “These [sub] committees will hold dialogues with different stakeholders and seek feedback from them on what needs to be done after [Prime Minister] Narendra Modi’s government returns to power,” Singh told reporters after the meeting. He added some of these suggestions will be included in the BJP’s manifesto.
Another Manifesto Committee member said the sankalp patra’s making will be a “big event”. He added separate meetings with voters like farmers, youths, women, businessmen and others will be held in different locations.
The member said the voters would be told about the Modi government’s achievements over the last five years. He added
These [sub] committees will hold dialogues with different stakeholders and seek feedback from them... RAJNATH SINGH, Union home minister
they would seek their advice on what more needs to be done.
“The activity on the ground will be supplemented with an online campaign to crowdsource suggestion on the making of the sankap patra,” the leader said.
The 20-member Manifesto Committee includes Union ministers like Arun Jaitley, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Nirmala Sitharaman, Thaawarchand Gehlot, Piyush Goyal, and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. It also has former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Bihar’s deputy chief minister Sushil Modi, his Uttar Pradesh counterpart, Keshav Prasad Maurya, among its members.
The Manifesto Committee was constituted on January 6.