Tardy progress on 'booth shashitikaran' irks BJP leadership

Hyderabad:  The Bharatiya Janata Party appears to be at its wits end as its Telangana unit struggles to get its act together at the ground level. Party leaders claim that the perceived lack of unity of purpose among senior state leaders is not something that the BJP’s national leadership is worried about. What bothers the party the most is the tardy progress on the 'booth shashitikaran' exercise, which the party needs to complete in order to make its presence felt at the ground level.

The past three days have seen senior party officials camp out in Hyderabad and interact with district and state level leaders, demonstrating once more how seriously the party's national leadership takes this matter.  “The emphasis of the meetings was on organizational affairs,” a senior BJP leader said on Thursday.

Among those who camped in the city were the party’s national general secretaries, Sunil Bansal in-charge of organizational affairs for the state, and Tarun Chugh in-charge of political affairs for Telangana, Arvind Menon the national secretary and Shiv Prakash, the national joint secretary of the party.
This is not the first time that the party leadership deployed these leaders to Telangana, and it is expected that in the weeks and months to come, they will be spending more time in the state working with the state and district level BJP leaders and workers.

The increased emphasis comes a few days before Home minister Amit Shah’s public meeting on April 23 at Chevella. According to party sources, Shah has taken it upon himself to get the BJP in the state in shape as the party works to achieve its goal of gaining power in Telangana by winning the Assembly elections later this year.

Party sources said the national leadership was pushing the state unit as much as it could, emphasizing on strengthening the BJP at the polling booth level. “But the problem is, not everyone understands that setting up booth committees, and strengthening the party at the booth level are two different things. This is being drilled in now,” a party leader explained.

It is learnt that among the issues identified that were slowing down the booth level work were some local party leaders merely making up a list of people for the booth committees and sending them. “This is taking some time, but we will get there,” a senior office bearer of the state BJP said.