Party reaches out to 3 lakh families across India, urging support for NDA in upcoming state elections
New Delhi: Ahead of the November Assembly polls, the BJP is launching a major campaign to engage Bihari migrants across India, urging them to influence their relatives and friends in Bihar to vote for the party and its allies. Under this strategy, the Delhi BJP has identified at least 3,00,000 Bihari families and instructed party workers to maintain regular contact with them.
BJP units in Haryana, Delhi and other states are compiling data on “pravasi” (migrant) Biharis, including the number of family members registered as voters in Bihar, their Assembly constituencies and polling booths. “Many state units have assigned one worker for every 50 ‘pravasi’ Biharis,” a party insider said. “Our workers have been asked to stay in regular touch with these migrants.”
While BJP leaders continue to hold events within Bihar, the party has now activated its organisational machinery nationwide to reach out to migrant Biharis and solicit their support for the ruling alliance. State BJP units have been asked to highlight the achievements of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s NDA government at the Centre and Nitish Kumar’s alliance government in Bihar.
In Delhi, the BJP has set a target of contacting at least 100 Bihari voters through each of its 3,500 “Shakti Kendras” (clusters of three to four polling booths). “We plan to reach around 3,00,000 families, with one worker covering a group of 50 households,” said a senior Delhi BJP leader. Over 1,000 workers from Bihar have been deployed for this purpose.
Senior BJP functionaries also report that Bihar-based leaders are holding interactive sessions with registered migrant voters, urging them to support the BJP and the NDA in upcoming Assembly elections across the country.
On March 22, to invoke “Bihari pride,” the party organised the “Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat – Sneh Milan” programme nationwide on Bihar Foundation Day. According to the 2011 Census, about 7.5 million Bihari migrants live in various states, a number estimated to have more than tripled over the past 14 years.
