BJP's push to woo dalit vote bank

New Delhi: In an attempt to win the dalit and JJ Colony vote bank, which played a significant role in the AAP’s victory in the last Delhi Assembly polls in 2015, the Delhi BJP has decided to go full throttle to make way in these crucial vote banks. In an outreach programme for these vote banks, Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari will be spending a night at a JJ or dalit colony from now. In order to strengthen its traditional booth management skill, the party will hold one convention to motivate booth-level workers around the middle of this month and a mega convention in the second half of February or in the first half of March.

Initiating the programme, Mr Tiwari spent the night of December 31 with the residents of the Gas Godown Jhughi Basti at Inderpuri. He reached there at 9.45 pm and stayed there till around 10.15 am on January 1. On Monday, Mr Tiwari led a march from Valmiki Mandir at Mandir Marg to the Ambedkar Bhawan at Jhandewalan where he garlanded the statue of Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar to say his thanks to the community after the launch of the new mobile banking app, BHIM, named after Dr Ambedkar. Mr Tiwari garlanded the statue with the help of a crane.

From Wednesday, Mr Tiwari will be travelling across the slum and dalit colonies to check the status of development and civic amenities. A senior party functionary told this newspaper that this exercise will continue with an objective to reach out to these communities which voted en masses to AAP, helping the rival to register historic victory. “If the party efforts to win this community turn fruitful then no one can stop the BJP from winning the ne-xt civic polls for the third consecutive time beating the anti incumbency of 10 years,” he added.

Talking about the benefits of the night stay programme in slum clusters, Mr Tiwari said that this exercise of going amidst the people is to take a reality check of the tall claims of developmental works in these cluster made by the Arvind Kejriwal government.

The party, meanwhile, is also working to charge up its booth-level workers. To motivate them, the party has planned an event in which around 5, 000 booth level workers will be participating.

“The event will be organised around January 15 and another event will be held after February 15 in which around 60,000 workers, about four from each polling booths in the national capital, will reach out to the voters at their door steps,” said a senior party leader.