Zee Media Bureau
New Delhi: The Bhartiya Janata Party is ready with its plan for the all-important 2014 General Elections.
The 12-member committee to which Narendra Modi was appointed as chairperson in Goa last month will have senior leaders like Murli Manohar Joshi, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, M Venkaiah Naidu, Nitin Gadkari, besides Chief Ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh) and Manohar Parrikar (Goa) among others working for 2014 polls.
This committee will be assisted by 20 sub-committees which will concentrate on various aspects of electioneering including rallies, publicity, manifesto, reaching out to the youth through social media, courting first time voters, "crowd sourcing", and preparing a vision document of its programmes and a "chargesheet" against the UPA rule.
The announcement was made by BJP general secretary Ananth Kumar in the national capital.
Veteran leader MM Joshi will lead the manifesto committee, while Modi aide Amit Shah will be in the publicity team. The publicity campaign will be led by Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley along with Shah.
Manifesto team will also have Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, former Himachal Pradesh CM Prem Kumar Dhumal, Sushil Kumar Modi, Shahnawaz Hussain and VK Malhotra, among others, as members.
Former BJP president Nitin Gadkari has been made in-charge of the Delhi Assembly elections. Navjot Singh Sidhu, Amritsar MP, will assist Gadkari. Gadkari will also lead the panel responsible for vision document. To be prepared under the guidance of Gadkari, with Vinay Sahasrabuddhe as a member, the document will highlight the achievements of erstwhile NDA government.
Ravi Shankar Prasad and Gopinath Munde have been entrusted with the task of making chargesheet against the UPA. Nirmala Sitharaman, Kirit Somaiya, Meenakshi Lekhi and Arti Mehra form a part of this team.
The online campaign will be headed by Piyush Goyal. Ananth Kumar and Varun Gandhi will be responsible for leaders` rally. BJP`s campaign for 2014 will kick-start from August. The party plans to organise over 100 rallies in the run-up to the elections.
Among the "innovative" efforts at wooing voters is BJP`s special focus on the "emerging population" - the first time and new voters who form 20 percent of the electorate. Amit Shah, Poonam Mahajan, Sidhu and Trivendra Rawat will handle this.
The party`s attempts to mobilise support among different communities like weavers, farmers, peasants and labourers, fishermen and so on through targeted conferences will be organised by general secretary Murlidhar Rao. Vinay Katiyar, Shyam Jaju, and Vijay Sonkar Shastri will assist him.
BJP will reach out to the professionals - doctors, CAs, engineers and so on - through a team comprising of Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Prakash Javadekar and others.
Workshops for booth level party workers will be organised
by Thawar Chand Gehlot, JP Nadda, Purushottam Rupala among others.
Crowd sourcing through feedback from people about party manifesto, slogans, vision document and so will be handled by general secretary Dharmendra Pradhan and Rameshwar Chaurasia.
Other sub-committees include a team for traditional campaign through plays and folk songs which will comprise of Smriti Irani, Captain Abhimanyu and Vani Tripathi.
Unorganised workers and nationalist organisations - most of whom are part of the Sangh Parivar - will be contacted through a special programme by a team headed by Gadkari. Uma Bharati, CP Thakur, JK Jain, Kalraj Mishra, Kiran Maheshwari and Mridula Sinha are part of this team.
Strengthening of party`s presence at the booth level will be the responsibility of general secretary (organisation) Ramlal who will be assisted by V Satish and Saudan Singh, both Secretary (organisation).
The party will also woo young and urban voters through social media like Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, etc. BJP`s IT and communications cell will be involved in this under the leadership of Piyush Goyal.
Balbir Punj, Prabhat Jha, Vinay Sahasrabuddhe and Sudha Malleya will be involved in preparation of party literature including pamphlets and booklets.
BJP will reach out to the North East states through various programmes which will be prepared by SS Ahluwalia, Tapir Gao, Kiren Rijuju and Padmanabh Acharya.
The travel and campaign programmes of top leaders will be finalised by Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Anil Jain and Arun Singh.
Other committees include a team for dealing with legal and Election Commission issues and mass campaign committee.
"All the sub-committees will be steered under the leadership of Narendra Modi. The party has given Modi the responsibility of 2014 elections. Under his leadership the whole campaign will move forward," Ananth Kumar said.
The election campaign committee and the sub-committees will work under the overall "guidance" of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, LK Advani and party president Rajnath Singh, he added.
The decision to form the committees was taken at a meeting of the Parliamentary Board, BJP`s top policy-making body, which was attended by Narendra Modi, the election campaign committee chief, besides others.
The ground work for these committees was prepared at four-hour marathon one-on-one meeting between Rajnath and Modi here on Wednesday night, sources said.
The parliamentary board, where LK Advani was also present, deliberated for about two hours over the allocation of responsibilities among party general secretaries and other senior leaders in run up to the General Elections next year.
The parliamentary board had earlier authorised the BJP president and Modi to form these committees and appoint the members.
With PTI inputs
