Amit Shah stakes his presidency on membership drive

BJP asserts success of membership drive has encouraged the party to achieve new target of crossing 120 mn members

Just as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made the land bill something that he believes will come to define his tenure, so has Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah made the ambitious membership drive to be seen as the hallmark of his truncated term as the party chief.

The BJP national executive, to meet in Bengaluru on April 3 and 4, is likely to note the success of the membership drive while in its resolution also pat its back over Modi government's foreign policy successes and underscore its determination to continue with its economic reforms.

The resolution is likely to laud the government's success in changing the national discourse from corruption that marked the UPA rule to development, and how the land bill was "pro-farmer" as well as essential for providing jobs, schools, hospitals, better irrigation in rural areas. The resolution would lay the foundation for the BJP's 2019 Lok Sabha campaign that the Modi government has delivered on its promise of development.

Today, BJP office bearers dismissed as motivated allegations from the Congress as also some media reports that suggested irregularities in its membership drive. They said the success of the membership drive has encouraged the party to extend the drive by another couple of months to achieve its new target of crossing the 120 million member mark.

The membership drive that Shah launched with making Modi 'member number one' of the party on November 1, 2014 was to end today evening. Its target was to make the BJP the largest party on the planet in terms of members, surpassing the Chinese Communist Party that has approximately 85 million members.

The BJP claims the membership drive, which involves giving a missed call on a phone number, has been an enormous success. The missed call is followed by a text message from the BJP call centre which requires a membership seeker to reply with their personal details like name, age, address, etc. A person is enrolled as a member only after responding with a text message.

Today, a big display board was put up at the party national headquarters at 11, Ashoka Road in New Delhi that showed that the BJP received 150 million missed calls, and of these as many as 90 million callers became members by replying to the text message.

Once the membership drive is over, the party will launch its 'sampark' or contact followed by 'samvaad' or dialogue with its new members. The 'sampark' phase will have party workers visit the homes of new members to verify their antecedents, including checking whether the membership aspirant is above 18 years and distribute party literature.

The 'samvaad' phase will have the party district committees sifting through the members to identify 1.5 million "committed" members and conduct training workshops for them.

The party claimed to have 30 million members before the start of the membership drive. Its ultimate objective is to make as many of the 170 million who voted for the party in the 2014 Lok Sabha election as its members. The objective being to make BJP a mass based party from a predominantly cadre based party. Shah had taken over the party presidency in August 2014 to complete Rajnath Singh's three-year term who quit after becoming the home minister with nearly two years left of his term.