With panchayat elections slated for the end of the year, the Bharatiya Janata Party has set a target to constitute a five-member committee at every booth. The chairman of the committee will hold weekly virtual meetings preferably with different people.
The calendar of the programme has already been decided and handed over to the senior party leaders to implement it.
Sources said that the party had stressed that the committee would have representation of all important communities, including members from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
It would be mandatory for two members of the committee to have smartphones so that they may communicate with the people virtually, if required.
“The IT cell of the party has created around 40,000 WhatsApp groups for rapid communication transmission, right down to the booth level workers and we are going to use this channel for propagating our ideas among our supporters,” a senior BJP leader said.
He said that the party workers were well informed about the latest technology and would have no problem in communicating with the cadre.
The idea behind creating 40,000 WhatsApp groups is to ensure that party decisions percolate to the grassroots level.
The BJP has used the lockdown period to strengthen its digital presence at the block level. The party has already ensured that all the district offices are equipped with a video-conferencing facility.
“This helps the leadership in contacting party workers and giving instructions for implementing them at the ground level. The party is also working through an audio bridge that allows multiple audio inputs to be mixed and sent to audio outputs,” the leader said.
The audio bridge was recently put to use when the party organised 44 virtual rallies on July 17. Through this bridge, one can interact with 20,000 party workers at a time.
The BJP has decided to nominate one convenor each for 60,000 village panchayats and 15,000 block and district panchayats. These convenors, called ‘’sanyojak’’, will function as the eyes and ears of the state leadership and will help in finalising the party’s poll strategy and will also suggest names of candidates.