Mumbai: Ahead of BMC polls, BJP targets voters at booth level

After announcing its Poll Khole Andolan, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has come up with another plan for the forthcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) election. The BJP will focus on strengthening support for it in booths (groups of voters in a locality) in wards where its candidates lost by less than 1,000 votes in the 2017 election.

The decision for this was taken in a recent meeting of former corporators. "There are 52 wards where BJP candidates lose by 1,000 or less votes. We decided to focus on these wards," said party leader and former corporator Vinod Mishra.

"We will work at booth level to strengthen the wards. We are identifying booths where our candidate was second. The plan is to reach every voter. We will convey to voters the work done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government in the past eight years. We will also inform voters about the various schemes of the Modi government. We will also tell them the work done by former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis for Mumbai. Our party workers will reach out to every voter and tell them about the corruption in the BMC and state government," Mishra added further.

In the 2017 civic election, the BJPs 82 candidates and the Shiv Sena's 84 candidates won. A booth consists of 1,000 to 1,200 voters and there were 8,500 booths in the 2017 BMC election. According to the Election Commission, there are 99.6 lakh voters in Mumbai. In Mumbai city there are 25.1 lakh and in the suburbs there are 74.5 lakh voters.

"The BJP certainly benefited from the division of votes in some wards. But it is unlikely that it will benefit every time. Therefore these wards will be strengthened. For this, we will work at the booth level," said a source from the party.

8,500
No. of booths in 2017 BMC poll