Gearing up for the upcoming Assembly elections scheduled to be held in November/December the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) today held series of meetings with Chief Minister Raghubar Das, Ministers in his Cabinet, senior party functionaries, MLAs and other senior office bearers attending the meet.
The State election management committee meeting was held in the evening which was attended by Chief Minister Raghubar Das, union tribal affairs minister Arjun Munda, State BJP president Laxman Gilua, State BJP election in-charge OP Mathur, election co in-charge Nand Kishore Yadav, BJP national general secretary (organizational) BL Santhosh, MPs including Jayant Sinha, Sudarshan Bhagat, Sunil Singh, state BJP organizational secretary Dharma Pal Singh, State general secretary Deepak Prakash and others.
The senior leaders had a discussion about election preparations and management along with discussing names of probable candidates for first two phases. The State election committee after finalizing the names will send it to party central leadership, where the BJP parliamentary board after consultation with state leaders will announce the names of candidates. The last date for filling nomination for first phase of election is November 13, while for second phase the last date of filling nominations is November 18. The first phase of Jharkhand assembly elections will be held on November 30, the second phase on December 7. Jharkhand will have five phase of polling with results on December 23.
Apart from election committee meeting, the BJP leadership also attended other meetings, where senior leadership gave tips on booth level management. The star attraction of today’s meeting was presence of the BJP national general secretary (organizational), BL Santhosh. Santhosh, who replaced general secretary (organisation) Ramlal this year in July as the later had completed about 12 years in the party gave tips to party leaders asking them to focus on booth-level election management. Santhosh, an engineer by profession and full time worker of RSS since 1993, who can fluently speak five languages -- English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Tulu (Dravidian language) gave tips to booth level workers from Hatia and Kanke Assembly constituencies how to reach out to voters.
A booth level leader who was present at the meeting requesting anonymity said, “Santhosh assessed the 2014 Assembly election and this year general election booth wise votes received by BJP candidates. While going though the booth wise votes, he gave the task to improve voting percentage. Stress was given to the booth having high concentration of minorities’ voters especially (Muslim and Christian).”
Santhosh, who is instrumental in BJP's electoral and social growth in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala asked the booth level workers to create awareness about the various schemes of centre and State especially meant for minorities.
Kanke and Hatia will go to poll in third phase of election scheduled on December 12. Sources said that the party will gather such feedback from booth level workers for other constituencies too.