A BJP 'vistarak': Satyam Singh Chauhan, vital link between party and voters

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) continues to outshine its opponents in election micro-management and booth organisation because booths form a vital link between a party and its voters.

The labarthee sampark pramukh (contact persons with the beneficiaries of the government’s welfare programmes) — who double as vistaraks (junior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, pracharaks) — play a significant part in the chain of responsibilities given to functionaries on the ground.

Satyam Singh Chauhan, 23, is a vistarak, assigned to convince voters of the “far-reaching benefits” of the schemes and doles handed out by the Centre and the Uttar Pradesh government in Firozabad’s Sirsaganj Assembly. This seat is the most important to the BJP because it was the only one it lost to the Samajwadi Party (SP) in 2017.

Chauhan, whose home is nearly 400 km away in Shahjahanpur, was put in charge of Sirsaganj six months ago. His first task was to identify suitable candidates. “For months I spoke to people from every section. The name that cropped up repeatedly was that of Om Prakash Verma,” he said. Verma belonged to the Nishad community, which is engaged in fishing in the Yamuna and comprises a bulk of the electorate here. But Verma was in the SP. “Our leaders worked on him. He joined the BJP in January and is our candidate. His grandfather, Raghuvar Dayal, was in the Jana Sangh and is still hailed as the messiah of the Nishad samaj,” said Chauhan.

Chauhan’s father is a farmer in Shahjahanpur’s Muzaffarpur village and his link with the RSS-BJP is tangential, through an uncle. He was attracted to the “nation before everything” ideology while studying at the Sangh-run Vidya Mandir in Shahjahanpur and began attending RSS shakhas when he was in class 7. In class 10, he attended the Sangh’s officers’ training camp. A three-year programme, Chauhan didn’t go beyond the first year. By then, he was inducted into the RSS’ student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), and was elected the president of his college union.

From the ABVP to the BJP was a hop, skip and jump away. Right now, Chauhan is engaged in visiting voters to propagate the BJP’s lotus symbol with an appeal to not “waste” their votes. He holds an MBA degree from Lucknow’s International Institute of Special Education. “But the notion of working in a multinational company or start-up for money and perks never interested me,” said Chauhan.