Uttar Pradesh takes a lead in putting Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the league of world’s largest political parties by enrolling over 1 crore members and this number is likely to swell to over 1.5 crore by March 31 next. “BJP has already registered 4.65 crore new members in the country since November 1 last though the unregistered members is around 8.50 crore. Of this, over 1.10 crore members are from Uttar Pradesh only,” said BJP vice-president and in-charge of the membership drive Dinesh Sharma here on Monday.
He said that the BJP membership drive is underway in other countries with the organisation under the banner of ‘Friends of BJP’ have enrolled thousands of new members in london, New York and other places across globe. “In coming few days BJP is set to cross the numbers of members of the communist party of China and Russia. In China, the Communist Party has 17 crore members which include all the Army personnel and Government employees. But the actual number of common citizen is not more than 5 crore,” he said.
Dr Sharma said that BJP is all set to become the world’s largest political party after March 31. Still, there are 58 days left before this campaign comes to an end. Certainly the total count would cross 10 crore in the country, he said. “The party has decided to honour the leaders who make highest number of members by inviting them on tea with party president Amit Shah and even with Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” he said.
In Uttar Pradesh, the new membership drive has enrolled 1.13 crore with a target to cross 1.50 crore by March 31. Deputy in-charges of the membership drive Arun Singh and Vinay Shahastrabudhi too claimed that the drive has given encouraging results in all the States including North-Eastern States and seven Southern States where the party is weak. “In Kerala, we have enrolled 10 lakh new members while in West Bengal it was over 17 lakh. In Tamil Nadu the new registered members are over 12 lakh,” Shahastrabudh said.