BJP bid to undo poll damage

JAIPUR, DEC 12: Rattled by its humiliating defeat in the recent Assembly elections, the Rajasthan BJP leadership has planned a statewide ...

JAIPUR, DEC 12: Rattled by its humiliating defeat in the recent Assembly elections, the Rajasthan BJP leadership has planned a statewide campaign to boost the sagging morale of its rank and file and re-energise itself.

The party has, consequently, convened division-level meetings of key party leaders from the districts. The first meeting will be held at Ajmer on December 13. It would be followed by a similar meeting at Udaipur on December 16. The dates for the meetings at Jaipur, Kota, Bharatpur, Jodhpur and Bikaner would be announced later. Those slated to attend the meetings are district presidents and general secretaries, block presidents and general secretaries, zila pramukhs, chairpersons of municipal committees and corporations, legislators and members of parliament.

Party sources disclosed here on Friday that State president Raghuvir Singh Kaushal was scheduled to participate in the meetings. The sources said that once this broad exercise was complete, the State leadership would turn to districtunits and reorganise those which had of late become somewhat non-functional. Their number was placed at six from a total of 32.

The Assembly polls exposed the state of affairs in these units completely. There were certain units, particularly in the western and northern areas, where the BJP had been traditionally weak.

Even after the state politics had got polarised between the Congress and the BJP, the party had not been able to acquire an organisational structure matching that of the Congress in these areas, primarily because of the leaders8217; pre-occupation, either in their government at Jaipur or in their traditional strongholds.

However, one silver lining the recent elections had thrown up was that even while the party had lost in its strongholds like Kota and Jaipur divisions, it had managed to make inroads in Congress strongholds. The party has resolved to consolidate these gains. It has decided to assign two districts each to senior state leaders like Hari Shankar Bhabhra, Lalit Kishore Chaturvedi,and Ghanshyam Tewari to tone them up.