Delhi BJP, RSS huddle over a common campaign, possible candidates, and a faceless poll in Delhi

Plans include giving party tickets to a majority of fresh faces with no political baggage; and especially reaching out to slum dwellers and the trading community

Scarcely has the heat and dust of the poll campaigns in Maharashtra and Jharkhand settled down that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mothership of the BJP, has begun preparations for a coordinated campaign for the Assembly election in Delhi due in February next year, with the first coordination meetings held a week ago.

At the meeting, several issues were discussed on going into the poll season, including not projecting anyone for the Chief Ministerial post; giving party tickets to a majority of fresh faces with no political baggage; and especially reaching out to slum dwellers and the trading community. The trading community, which has been a key support base of the BJP, had shifted to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the previous election, with Arvind Kejriwal belonging to that community.

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Present at the meeting were the joint general secretary of the RSS, Arun Kumar, who is also responsible for coordination between the BJP and the RSS, as well as the RSS prant (State) general secretary Anil Gupta, RSS Delhi office-bearers Jatin and Vishal, and the State RSS coordinator with the BJP, Dayanand. From the BJP, national vice president of the party and Delhi in-charge Baijayant Panda was present along with State unit chief Virendra Sachdeva, Minister of State for Corporate Affairs and Road Transport and Highways, Harsh Malhotra, as well as Delhi State BJP general secretary (organisation) Pawan Rana.

“It was one of the early meetings for the Delhi polls, but we, the RSS and BJP, are going to hold at least 25,000 small outreach meetings in the next couple of months. A review of our outreach among jhuggi-jhopdi (slum) clusters for the last five months was also done,” a source said.

Very significantly, a strategy to win back the support of the national capital’s trading community was also discussed. “We have found that while the trading community in Delhi supports the BJP during the Lok Sabha election, during the Assembly election, it opts for the AAP. We need to break that trend,” a source present at the meeting said.

The need to give tickets to fresh, young faces, and not project a Chief Ministerial candidate, was also discussed at the meeting.

The RSS, after keeping away from a large part of the BJP’s campaign for the Lok Sabha election of 2024 over its unhappiness with the BJP tying up with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar and several such cynical political moves, is now back in the fold. During the Maharashtra electdion, RSS joint general secretary Atul Limaye held on to the coordination job, while Mr. Kumar was active in the Haryana Assembly election. RSS national executive member Ram Madhav was made BJP in-charge of Jammu and Kashmir during the Assembly election in that Union Territory.

“Post the Lok Sabha election, there has been a rapprochement between the RSS and the BJP, a realisation that whatever the differences within the ideological block, there should be no quarter given to the Opposition,” the source said.

Published - November 19, 2024 06:11 pm IST