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Post the glitches suffered in the recently held Panchayat elections, the State Bharatiya Janata Party is keying the control, alternate and delete to reboot the 'Win' software to take on the BJD challenge in the 2024 general elections.
In order to take 'control' of the situation post the Panchayat and urban local body elections, and having garnered around 30 percent and 27 percent core voter base in rural and urban areas, respectively, the saffron party will soon put into practice the 'Win soft' strategy of poll wins in UP, Uttarakhand and Goa.
As per top party sources, in order to ensure a deeper penetration, the State BJP will very soon put in place the Panna Samiti (literally means page (voter list) panel in over 96k booths in the State. Each panel will consist of 5 members. The party is in a process of appointing around 45000 such panels in the State.
"In 2017 Panchayat elections, the BJP had adopted the plan of booth sasaktikaran (booth strengthening) and appointed Panna Pramukhs (page - voter list - chiefs) in over 60k booths. The plan had yielded the desired outcome and BJP won around 294 Zilla Parishad seats. Post the defeat in the 2022 polls, the party will introduce Panna Samitis to ensure a larger penetration," said a top leader from the coastal region.
BJP's Win Soft
A study of the BJP's 'Win' software carrying the Panna Pramukh version reveals that the saffron party usually reloads it nearly two -years before the general elections to parliament or state assemblies. These page chiefs were dissolved after the elections. UP had recently decided to make the Panna Samitis a permanent mechanism to establish voter connect.
The State BJP had readied the booth winning model to test its potential and applicability in the 2017 Panchayat elections. However, even as the general elections to Odisha Assembly is only a couple of years away, the booth sasakhtikaran in the 2022 panchayat elections was missing.
The page panels of the party will connect with five families on a voter page list. The 5-member body will enlist around 200 voters. Moreover, the five-member panel will not represent members from a single-family. Union ministers like Dharmendra Pradhan, Ashwini Vaishnaw, senior BJP leaders, MPs and MLAs will become Page chiefs of a booth to pep up the spirits of the party karyakartas.
"This will be a heterogeneous group to bring a homogeneity in voting pattern in favour of BJP," a leader explained.
Saffron Alt Key
The State BJP will key the 'Alt - alternate' button to take on the litany of BJD programmes. Top party sources reveal that the booth panel will prepare a list of programmes run by the BJD government and the Modi government.
A study on the functioning of such page panels in BJP reveals the following.
- Each member of the panel will educate 30 voters (not belonging to a single household) about the Modi govt schemes and document whether they are benefitted or not.
- If benefitted, their satisfaction level.
- This feedback will be dispatched to the party war room in the NCR (National Capital Territory) region in order to keep the BJP hierarchy in the loop.
- The duty of the panel members is to ensure the participation of labharthis (beneficiaries) in voting.
- At the end of voting, the panels will send a report to the NCR office about the voter participation in their respective booths, which in turn will give a definitive picture of the party's prospects at the hustings.
Moreover, in order to energise the page panel, the party has decided to induct independent Panchayat and ULB contestants having the potential to win a majority of votes in their bastis or streets or lanes.
Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan at a public meeting on his home turf had revealed BJP's this new strategy.
An analysis shows the party has gone for this 'Alt' strategy to shore up its voter connect at the ground level.
The Bhubaneswar Show
The potential of BJP's Panna Samiti model was to the fore in the recently concluded mayor elections in the Capital City. The polling of over 1 lakh votes by the BJP's Mayor candidate Suniti Mund, a beginner in politics, had even surprised BJD poll managers.
As per BJP National Spokesperson and Bhubaneswar MP Aparajita Sarangi, the party's success in the Mayor and urban polls in Bhubaneswar lies in the successful implementation of the Panna samiti and panna pramukh model of BJP.
She even documented the optimal functioning of such BJP page panels during the urban polls in her Parliamentary Constituency and presented a copy each to PM Narendra Modi and HM Amit Shah, recently.
In fact, it's Amit Shah who had first engineered this Panna Pramukh 'Win' Software for BJP in the 2007 Gujarat elections. Later Shah loaded the software in UP elections in 2014, and 2017 and a revamped version in 2022 Assembly elections to register a thumping win.
