BJP membership push to focus on states where it's out of power

The BJP will launch a 35-day-long special membership drive next month as part of efforts to expand its base in the country, especially in states where it is not in power, senior party leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan said Thursday.

The former Madhya Pradesh chief minister said the nationwide drive will begin on July 6 and conclude on August 11.

Chouhan, the BJP's national vice-president, was in March appointed the chief of the party's membership drive.

"The party now aims to concentrate on strengthening its base, especially in states whether it is not in power.

"This drive, called Sangthan Parv, is an elementary step towards achieving our goal," Chouhan said at a press conference here.

The campaign assumes significance since it is being launched ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly polls scheduled in October.

"Our party has 95,472 booths in Maharashtra and our aim is to add at least 50 new members at each booth," Singh said, adding the party currently has 1.07 crore members in the state.

Singh said new members will be enrolled both online and offline and elaborated arrangements will be made to weed out bogus calls.

A few such callers were found to be bogus during the previous membership drive in 2014, he said.

"Booth-level workers will be given the task of verifying callers on a dedicated mobile number. This verification process will entail OTP method and then only the membership forms will be filled. This process will weed out random calls," the three-term former chief minister said.

Chouhan said the focus of the membership drive will be in regions and states where the BJP's position is not strong enough such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Puducherry, Odisha, West Bengal, Kashmir Valley and Sikkim, among others.

"Despite our thumping and record-breaking victory in the recent Lok Sabha elections, our top leadership feel that we are yet to reach our peak.

"We have to strengthen our reach wherever we are not in the government and we have to increase our victory margin where we are in the government," he said.

"Though we are the largest party in the world, having over 11 crore members, still we aim to increase our reach by 20 per cent in each state," he said.