The BJP will dig deep and “almost resurrect” its entire history from old files, films, photographs, people, party leaders, public meetings, anecdotes and ‘sweat-sweet-bitter memories’ of its ‘struggle’ before condensing it in a digitalised form in all party offices across the country. Weeks after the BJP achieved ‘the trophy’ of being the largest political party in the world, it is on to the job of turning the party into “a most networked” political entity in the country where one could find any sundry information about the party with a click of the mouse.
Once the digitalisation of party offices is completed, the entire BJP history with smallest details would be accessible to as distant (or remote) places as Haflong in Assam or Port Blair in Andaman and Nicobar or any other corner of the world which is net-connected. Digitalisation of its history apart, other facets of ‘modernisation’ of party would take an estimated 11 crore BJP workers to their leaders across the country by way of video conferencing, fax facilities and real-time exchanges of information through internet.
The task of enlisting remotest details of history from the days of ‘Bharatiya Jansangh (1951) to formation of BJP (1980) to date from every nook and corner of the country has been entrusted to a committee headed by National Secretary and State Incharge (Prabhari) Odisha BJP Arun Singh. The committee, which was announced in April includes — Poonam Mahajan (MP), Mahendra Pandey (former cells-in-charge), Arun Jain (Secretary) and Mohan Rajulu (State General Secetary, TN).
“The committee already had three meetings and work is in rapid progress,” Singh told The Pioneer. He maintained that a dedicated team of party workers was assisting the panel to achieve its aims. Giving details, he said digitalisation of records means “knowing about our past programmes, profile of candidates, campaign advertisements, CDs.. if we have these ready with us during election time, we may arrive at good decisions”. He said more than anything the effort of digitisation would help “ideological penetration”.
By 2016, all States would be digitalised and thereafter, it would be carried out in all districts in the country. The BJP leader did not give details of funds required for the work saying “ money would be contributed by party workers”. The work would take the BJP panel to the history of party in State and district levels to collect profile of at least 100 BJP leaders of the past.” We would get the photographs, and speeches of local leaders when they were young, details of their participation and also visit their home.. This will make the emotional connect with workers who would be happy to remember how their party grew in the past,” the BJP Secretary said.
Singh said the party is constructing an e-library to provide audio-visual facilities and photo uploading cameras in offices. To further consolidate party’s wherewithal, the BJP has planned “party-owned” modern and digital offices with real-time video conferencing facilities in all the 676 districts of the country. State party presidents have already been asked to identify lands in their respective States as the “model” of the offices (to be equipped with e-libraries), is ready with the party. As per plan, in the BJP-ruled States, the Central and State party units will bear the cost of the offices on a 40:60 basis. In the non-BJP ruled States, the Central unit will bear the full cost, sources said.
The modernisation of party offices and connectivity all over the country was particularly stressed at the Bangalore National Executive meeting in April as BJP’s political resolution moved by former BJP president Rajnath Singh noted the party’s rapid strides at the Centre, States and local level polls “which is actually making it a party with formidable presence from Panchayat to Parliament”.