VIJAYAWADA: Newly appointed state BJP president Daggubati Purandeswari faces a tough challenge to lead the party in the run-up to the Assembly and Lok Sabha polls.
She will immediately have to constitute booth-level committees and select members for various committees. It is time for the party to reach out to the people and help it do well in the polls. As of now, due to a long period of drift, the party is no significant force in AP.
BJP national president J.P. Nadda announced her name as AP’s party chief on Tuesday. Purandeswari is currently taking part in the Amarnath Yatra and plans to meet Nadda on Wednesday evening to thank him and chalk out her plan of action in AP. Dates are being worked out as to when she can take charge officially. An auspicious muhurta is being selected for this.
BJP leaders say the strength of the party’s booth-level committees helped the party retain power in Gujarat for many terms, and this would be done all over the country. These committees take care of all local problems and bring these to the notice of the authorities to resolve them. This helps the party win the confidence of the people.
In AP, constitution of booth-level committees was done only to the level of 50 per cent. Members to various committees like the Mahila Morcha are also to be appointed. The AP BJP leaders, as in other southern states, took things easy so far and flaunted their status of being the power-wielders at the Centre.
The state party has been advised by the central leadership to activate the party’s official web portal ‘Saral’ on a daily and even hourly basis.
The new chief has to continue with the job of highlighting the flaws in the governance style of the YSRC and expose its failures at district and state levels. Such works have been completed at village, mandal and assembly segment levels so far, claim state BJP leaders.
Purandeswari, a former Union minister, will also have to strike a chord with Pawan Kalyan and his Jana Sena that is an ally of the BJP. She will also have to have links with the Telugu Desam and its chief, Chandrababu Naidu, in case the BJP opts to ally with it.
The BJP national leadership under Pravas Yojana has been nurturing 11 parliamentary segments -- Visakhapatnam, Anakapalli, Kakinada, Rajamahdenravaram, Narasapuram, Machilipatnam, Vijayawada, Guntur, Tirupati, Hindupur and Kurnool -- in the last one-and-half-years. The central leadership keeps sending its national-level leaders including ministers to gauge the progress in implementation of the central schemes and to reach out to the local people.
The new state chief has a tough task at hand. Union home minister Amit Shah has announced recently that he expected to get 20 MPs from AP in the next polls. The state has 25 LS seats.
BJP Rajya Sabha member G.V.L. Narasimha Rao, said, “Our new president will come up with a new team of leaders and lay a road map to expand the party base further in AP. We are getting a good response for the Pravas Yojana as people are confident that their problems are getting resolved with help from our leaders.”
BJP sources say the national leadership is mindful of the caste equations in AP and preferred Purandeswari, hailing from Kamma community, to lead the state party and woo the voters from this community in case the TD is not their favourite in the 2024 polls.
AP BJP general-secretary S. Vishunuvardhan Reddy said, “We are looking for the new head to lead the party and expand its voter base for the coming polls.”
The BJP secured nearly eight per cent votes in the 2014 polls but this got reduced to just one per cent in 2019 when it contested the polls all alone after sharing power with N. Chandrababu Naidu for a full five years. This, after Naidu sought to confront PM Narendra Modi and nursed an ambition to be a power player in Delhi.
