Nadda reviews preparations for BJP's countrywide membership drive

BJP working president JP Nadda on Monday held a meeting to review the preparations for the party's five-week countrywide membership drive scheduled to kickstart on July 6.

Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who is the chairman of the drive, all state general secretaries and general secretary (organisation) Ram Lal attended the meeting. The drive will go on till August 11.

At present, BJP has about 11 crore members and the party is planning to increase the number by at least 20 per cent.

During the meeting, the plans for the campaign were reviewed for every state and targets of 20 to 50 per cent increase in membership were set.

A target of 50 per cent increase in membership was set for states such as West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

BJP is also eying to make people from the minority community its members. Moreover, the party is hoping that the Triple Talaq Bill may woo Muslim women join it.

The party is also looking forward to leading personalities from Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana where Assembly elections are due this year, coming to its fold.

Senior BJP leaders will get engaged in the drive. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will start the campaign from Varanasi, his parliamentary constituency.

Home Minister Amit Shah will join the campaign in Telangana, according to sources.

Top party leaders will play the role of 'vistarak' for at least seven days. There will be 10 lakh booths across the country for the drive for which two lakh 'vistaraks' are being appointed. BJP has planned to deploy one 'vistarak' for every five booths.

Like in the past, members will be made through missed calls. Along with missed calls, paper verification will also be done this time.

Earlier, BJP workers were not able to reach a large number of people through missed calls. But this time, the party has done preparations for the same.

The party workers will visit people's houses, give a missed call and get forms filled to include the member's name, address, ID number and phone number.

Since the target is quite large, all national-level leaders of BJP to those at the divisional level will work for the campaign. The party is currently preparing the 'vistarak' list.