After tripling party’s strength in a short span, the BJP is set to engage in a massive exercise of training its new members at mandal, district and State levels in around 12,000 camps spread across the country. These camps will be attended and addressed by top party leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The party, with the membership figure touching 10 crore, will train 15 lakh freshly inducted members in a little over three months. The all-round training, including ideological orientation, will start in August from the mandal level in 11,000 camps. Besides BJP leaders, RSS functionaries will also attend the training sessions.
“The BJP does not have a luxury of being a professional party like Congress, SP, RJD and others. Ours is an ideology-driven party and members are not meant for electioneering only. We need to consolidate this exercise by transforming members into real cadres,” said P Murlidhar Rao, BJP national general secretary, who is also holding the responsibility of organising training camps in all the States.
“This is not a missed-call party,” he quipped apparently referring to the accusation that a number of members were “fake” and enrolled in the party by merely registering the missed calls to party’s designated number. The group, entrusted with the country-wide training, will have members from the national-level as well as from States.
Rao said planning for the training is underway and teachers are being roped in from “the nationalistic school of thought”. He said members would be given lessons in the history of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and BJP’s “struggles” and “victories” in its long march. On the question whether Mahatma Gandhi and Vivekananda would be the part of the training syllabus, the former head of Swadeshi Jagran Manch, an RSS outfit, said “nationalistic school” includes them. On being asked whether the exercise is because the BJP is in power at the Centre, Rao retorted: “It is also because of them that we came to power.”
The first phase of training will start at mandal level in 11,000 camps, 700 camps at district level, and 35 to 37 camps at State level. Each camp will not have maximum 150 members.
Rao said training will have variations depending on States, regions or pattern of dominant population. The reference and context of training camp in tribal locality would be different than that in an agriculture-farming dominated region or that in an industrial complex. Schedules for training camps would differ from mandal (for one night), to districts (two nights) and State-levels (three nights).
Each new member of the BJP will turn into “an active member” if he enrolls 100 members but “exception would be made in cases of professionals like doctors, engineers, professors, etc,” who could be useful for the party but are not able to fulfill this criteria, said the BJP leader.
The organisatonal polls would start after this over three-month exercise is completed. Membership enrollment, to be completed by April end, is being followed by “Sampark” (contact) and “Samvad” (dialogue) where BJP teams will visit fresh members for “verification” and “validation” of the details furnished to the party by them.