Eyeing next year's MCD polls, BJP plans 11K small meetings in 3 weeks
With an eye on next years municipal polls in the national capital, the BJP has planned to hold over 11,000 meetings with different sections of the society by the end of this month.
Elections to three Municipal Corporations of Delhi (MCD) will be held in April next year. The BJP holds power in the municipal bodies of Delhi since 2007.
Delhi BJP general secretary Harsh Malhotra told IANS that starting from the second week of September, the party plans to hold over 11,000 meetings till the month end.
"During the meetings, our leaders will interact with the people from different sections of the society like women, youth, Scheduled Caste, professionals, people from Uttarakhand, south India and others. The meetings will be held in small groups of around 25 to 50 prominent people from these groups," Malhotra said.
To win the support of the voters from the slum clusters, who traditionally used to vote for the Congress and now backs the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the BJP has planned small meetings in these clusters from the second half of this month.
"From September 15, we will start holding small meetings of 50 to 100 people in the slum clusters. The plans will be finalised in the next couple of days," Malhotra said.
As part of the preparations, the BJP has formed committees in over 8,000 polling booths in the city.
"Of the 13,789 booths in the city, we have formed 21-member committees in over 8,000 booths," he said.
To get people's response, about a fortnight ago, 14 prominent leaders of party's state unit, including Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta, spent a night with people in different parts of city.
The BJP also blamed the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government for stalling civic works by not releasing funds to the municipal corporations.
"The Kejriwal government is not allowing the MCDs to carry out their basic works by not releasing the due funds," Malhotra alleged.
In next year's MCD polls, the BJP faces strong challenge from AAP, as well as the anti-incumbency factor of three terms.
In the last municipal polls in 2017, in order to negate the anti-incumbency factor, the saffron party had denied tickets to all the sitting councilors.
However, the BJP is still to finalise the formula for candidate selection for the next municipal polls.
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