Amit Shah to address BJP’s booth-level workers on Jan 5

New Delhi

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah, who is also the Union home minister, will address a meeting of booth-level workers on January 5 as part of preparations for Delhi Assembly elections which is scheduled to take place early next year.

The meeting, senior party leaders said, is to motivate workers to ensure BJP’s return to power in Delhi after a gap of 21 years. Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari said that close to 30,000 booth-level workers and other leaders are expected to attended the event.

On Wednesday, Shah convened a two-hour long meeting of senior state leaders to discuss the election preparations. A senior BJP leader said that the meeting was one of the many that will be held to discuss strategy for Delhi elections.

“There are a lot of decisions that the Centre has taken for development and welfare of Delhi. For instance, the decisions regarding giving ownership rights to residents of unauthorised colonies or development projects to decongest the city are important and we have to tell the people about it. We also have to tell the people about the failure of the AAP government,” said a senior BJP leader.

The party — with the Centre’s key decision which is likely to benefit four million people — is hoping to make inroads in the unauthorised colonies, which is considered a stronghold of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

A booth-level workers convention is planned at Indira Gandhi stadium on January 5. Shyam Jaju, in-charge of Delhi, said, “Ours is a cadre-based party. On January 5, Amit Shahji will address the booth-level workers. It is to tell our cadre about the work done by our government at the Centre which they need to highlight and tell people in their respective areas. We have held this convention before the assembly elections in 2015 and also during 2017 municipal elections.”

The BJP is banking on its key decisions, especially giving ownership rights to residents of 1,731 unauthorised colonies and in-situ slum redevelopment taken by its government at the Centre, to win the upcoming Assembly elections. “We have started the process to setup help desk in all the 1731 unauthorised colonies which now will finally have a legal tag. We have called two booth-level workers from each booth and have also asked them to prepare a ground report of their area. We will start our door-to-door campaign in which our workers will go and tell people about the work done by the Centre for the welfare of Delhi,” said Tiwari.

The party has divided the 13, 872 booths in 70 assembly constituencies in three categories, based on the past election results, said a senior BJP leader. In ‘A category’ are booths which the party has always won, while ‘B category’ booths are those which the party has won once or lost by a narrow margin. In ‘C category’ are booths which the party has never won.

“While the focus is on all areas, we will be putting in more effort in areas where we have not done well earlier,” said a senior BJP leader.