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After the BJP recorded an emphatic win in Madhya Pradesh on Sunday, enthusiastic party workers gathered outside the residence of state BJP chief V D Sharma, lifted him on their shoulders and carried him to his home. This was a victory march for Sharma, who had been at the receiving end for months after several party leaders jumped ship to Congress.
As the celebrations continued, Sharma waved a placard of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and senior party leader Amit Shah. He then proceeded to explain what went behind the BJP victory – how the party clawed back in an election that the Congress thought was theirs to win.
Sharma told The Indian Express, “40 lakh booth-level workers followed Amit Shah’s strategy. This is the result of that. Amit Shah ji had given the task of getting 51 per cent vote share in each booth in the state. Our workers tirelessly worked at 64,523 booths in the state and helped us reach that target.”
It took the BJP more than a year to prepare for the comeback, he said, with the party silently forming an army of booth level workers, who implemented Shah’s plan and stunned the Congress into silence.
In January 2022, the party worked out a plan to form booth committees in at least 96 per cent of the constituencies. This exercise was carried out during the centenary celebrations of party veteran Kushabhau Thakre.
“During this exercise, we digitised the records of all our booth-level workers, with their pictures, and discussions were held on tasks at the booth level and strategies for contacting beneficiaries of our schemes,” said state BJP secretary Rajneesh Aggarwal.
“We established contact with beneficiaries of our schemes especially in SC, ST and other communities and kept reminding them about our schemes… We literally did a man-to-man marking in this. We wanted them to remember our schemes when they went to the booth (to vote),” he said.
“The digitisation helped as well, and the state leadership was in direct touch with the workers,” Aggarwal said.
“The list of beneficiaries of various schemes of the BJP’s double-engine government was compiled and distributed village wise and ward wise in cities and made available to the booth workers,” he said.
“The Congress outsourced its election to private agencies and did not have grassroots workers,” he said.
Then in March the party conducted ideological training workshops. There was feedback about lack of enthusiasm among ground-level workers, which was seen as a factor that cost the party the 2018 elections. The booth-level workers were told about the ideology of ‘Nation First’ during multiple training courses.
A senior BJP leader said, “Ayodhya and Ram Mandir were issues which helped mobilise them but they needed a proper understanding of where the BJP was headed. They needed to understand the ideological journey. This was instilled in them. Every Sunday, the booth workers had to listen to the PM’s Mann ki Baat and post pictures on the app.”
The party also introduced several new positions at the booth level, including social media in-charges, beneficiary in-charge and Shakti Kendra in-charges. A Shakti Kendra is a grouping of 6-8 booth-level volunteers. A total of 10,916 Shakti Kendras had been formed that bolstered the party’s panna pramukh recruitments. There was a special emphasis on recruiting at least 10 volunteers from the SC/ST communities.
Narsinghpur BJP vice-president Rama Kant Dhakar said, “We also got a large number of women volunteers. To our surprise, they were all Ladli Behanas (beneficiaries of the women’s scheme) who came on their own to help us. We knew then that we were winning.”
The party ensured that the booth workers did not work in isolation. Meetings of booth-level workers from different areas were organised where they “mingled over games and food”. “This helped break barriers and reduce competition, that way they discussed election strategies, which broke regional barriers and helped each other out,” said a BJP leader. A total of 42,000 WhatsApp groups were formed by the booth-level workers to ensure coordination.
The BJP’s biggest outreach programme was undertaken in June, when the booth-level workers made door-to-door contact with the voters and bombarded them with messages of central government schemes upon the completion of nine years of the Modi government. By the time this campaign was undertaken, the BJP had formed a new cadre of booth-level workers. The party routinely undertook booth expansion programmes where workers from all districts met and strategised for the elections.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself presided over on one such event in Bhopal in June.
During October, Karyakarta Mahakumbhs were organised where the state leaders drilled “15 strategies of Amit Shah to the booth level workers”.
“They were given printouts on the election strategies. They were given detailed lists of tasks – from door-to-door campaigning to ensuring third parties win in seats where the BJP was weak to ensure a split in vote share. Each strategy was curated based on how that booth performed in the last election,” a BJP leader said.
