BJP working on caste math for UP polls

Mumbai: With an eye on elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has assigned its north Indian cell the task of finding out the caste and district of the estimated 35 to 40 lakh north Indians living in Mumbai.

This is being done so that leaders from Uttar Pradesh who will be in the city to campaign for the state assembly polls can address the population accordingly.

Also, the idea is that the list could be used to influence voters for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls as north Indians form a huge chunk of voters here too. Work on the same has already started in the North Indian belts of the city.

Santosh Pandey, the president of BJP Mumbai’s Uttar Bhartiya Morcha, (North Indian Wing), said, “We have somewhere between 35 to 40 lakh people in Mumbai who belong to Uttar Pradesh. Our men will go to the areas in Mumbai, find the people, get their details, including the caste and district to which they belong and other details. This will help us reach maximum people from Uttar Pradesh.”

According to Mr Pandey, when leaders from the northern states want to come and meet a certain community they will have a readymade data made available to them and this will make their task easy.

“I have some 2,200 office bearers with me. This work of collecting data will keep my party workers active and they will also get to know more people and will help the party in getting more supporters,” said Mr Pandey.

UP goes to polls in mid-2017 while Mumbai’s BMC will go to poll in January. According to political parties, North Indian votes have an impact on more than 17 assembly seats in the city. Areas which have considerable north Indian population are Kandivali, Saki Naka, Andheri (east), Charkop, Bhandup, Kanjurmarg, Vikhroli, Kurla, Nehru Nagar, among others.