Hyderabad: Silent work carried out by the RSS in Haryana played a key role in helping the BJP retain the state, after initial reports predicted a rout. The turnaround in fortunes had left poll pundits puzzled while analysing the poll outcome.
Similarly, the RSS has stepped in to influence voters in Maharashtra, especially outreach programmes for neglected sections of society taken up as part of its centenary celebrations.
As part of a programme taken up as part of `Samajik Samarasta (social harmony)’, the RSS is offering a special gift box of `Diwali Farada’. Besides new clothes and `pataka box’ (crackers), RSS activists have been visiting the houses of poor Hindu families and handing over boxes of the special snacks.
Like Kumari Puja performed to girl children of neglected castes during Dasara Navaratri celebrations in some southern states, the RSS workers have started this special seva in Maharashtra.
Apart from bringing them into the mainstream Hindu society with Diwali gifts, the RSS activists would also induct into the political awakening sessions. It would likely prove a gamechanger, as these sections once used to be the votebanks of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress.
A senior RSS functionary said that the Sangh wanted to replicate the same kind of work in Maharashtra, which it had successfully done in Haryana.
A small team of senior swayamsevaks have started meeting middle-class and upper-middle class families in every Assembly segment with a focus on the strongholds of Vidarbha, Western Maharashtra, some parts of Maratwada and Konkan including Mumbai.
This small team consists of hardly two to four swayamsevaks, are tasked with holding meetings with two to three families, which became popular as 'drawing room’ meetings or `baitaks.’ It is mandatory to have at least one familiar person from the community or local area in the small team of RSS, the functionary said.
They never urge people to vote for the BJP, but raise the issues of national interest and country’s welfare.
The closed-door baitaks are open for interaction, and created a silent votebank in Haryana.
Entrusting the election work to senior leader Atul Limaye, joint general secretary of the RSS, signifies how the RSS is seriously taking up Maharashtra elections. As the RSS always maintains that it will not dabble in electoral politics, the Swayamsevaks will nowhere directly urge people to vote the BJP, but they will influence the voters and mould their opinion, the RSS functionary said.
