NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to adopt the “Saptarishi” strategy to mobilise its voters even as it starts preparing for the crucial Bihar Assembly elections to be held in November this year.
BJP sources said the there will be seven eminent people, or the “Saptarishi”, identified at the booth level, who will help in motivating voters in their respective booths. These people could be educationists, social workers or other people who have influence among the voters in society. The strategy, according to BJP leaders, will also help the party in expanding its support base and engaging more people in party’s public outreach.
“Saptarishi” is a Sanskrit word meaning seven sages and refers to seven rishis in ancient India who find mention at many places in the Vedas and other Hindu literature.
The party has been making experiments at the organisational level to increase its support base. One such experiment is appointing “panna pramukh” in which a member of the booth committee is given a page (called “panna” in Hindi) of the voters’ list, which comprises about 70-80 voters on both the sides. The “panna pramukh’ is supposed to focus on the voters on his/her “panna” and woo them to vote for the BJP.
A state-level meeting was held recently in Patna, in which it was decided to appoint “Saptarishi” at every booth. The meeting chaired by state party president Sanjay Jaiswal, and attended by senior BJP leaders like Nand Kishore Yadav, Sushil Kumar Modi and Mangal Pandey, besides others, decided to launch a special campaign to identify “Saptarishi”.
The party is gearing up for tricky negotiations to arrive at a seat-sharing formula with its alliance partner Janata Dal United and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). The Bharatiya Janata Party has made it clear that it will contest the elections under the leadership of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who will be seeking a fourth term. However, a section of state BJP leaders are concerned that the party may have to remain contended with the role of a junior partner to JDU in the wake of electoral reverses in the recent Assembly elections.
These leaders are also worried that the caste and local issues may dominate over the nationalism narrative.
“In the Delhi elections, we saw how local and populist issues outweighed the narrative of nationalism, which is an USP of the party,” said a party leader.
Kumar has started positioning himself for the elections. His government passed a resolution in the Assembly rejecting the proposed National Register f Citizens (NRC), without consulting the Bharatiya Janata Party. The Chief Minister has got a resolution passed in the Assembly for caste-based census. However, the BJP is treading very cautiously and reacting on these issues, so that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) remains intact and contests elections unitedly. The party is trying to learn from the Maharashtra experience where it had to snap ties with the Shiv Sena.
According to a BJP leader, the resolutions have helped Nitish Kumar shift the narrative from governance. It also indicates that JDU would be in the Big Brother’s role in the Bihar NDA.