GUWAHATI, July 18 - With the next Assam Assembly elections scheduled to be held around March-April next year, the ruling BJP is seeking to reach out to at least 50 lakh families in the State as part of its public outreach exercise.
�We had launched our Jan Sampark Abhiyan in June but the programme had to be put on hold on account of the worsening pandemic situation. Now we are looking to gradually restart the campaign later this month. There are a total of 65 lakh households in Assam. Our target is to personally reach out to at least 50 lakh of the families within next month or so,� a senior State BJP leader told this newspaper on Friday.
Once the public outreach programme resumes, BJP cadres, in groups of two, will move from house-to-house to reach out to each family personally.
�We will distribute booklets to each household listing the achievements of the Narendra Modi-led Central government and the Sarbananda Sonowal-led State government. It will also involve distribution of masks, sanitizers and spreading awareness about COVID-19 among the public,� said the BJP leader.
On being contacted, State BJP vice president Vijay Kumar Gupta said that even as the public outreach programme had to be suspended in view of coronavirus-induced lockdowns at many places, the ruling party is continuing with various organisational activities involving its cadres.
�We are relying on the online mode to keep our cadres battle ready. On July 15 and 16, we held video conferences across all 14 Lok Sabha constituencies of Assam on �India-China relations, boycott of Chinese products and its alternatives�. A total of 14 serving and former MPs of our party addressed the virtual events, which were attended by our district and mandal level office-bearers,� he said.
�Earlier, from July 8 to 10, we held video conferences at all the 126 Assembly segments of the State on the topic of �Atmanirbhar Bharat and Atmanirbhar Assam� for our party workers at the grass-roots level,� he said.
Gupta added that State BJP has formed 40,000 Whatsapp groups at the booth level so far.
�This exercise has been undertaken to facilitate party activities at the grass-roots level as well as to keep the voters abreast of our activities, plans and programmes. The target is to have two Whatsapp groups in each booth. We have over 26,000 booth committees in Assam. Till now, 20,000 of those have been covered and we have opened 40,000 groups in the concerned social media network,� Gupta said.
It is noteworthy that Prime Minister Modi had earlier this month held a virtual session with seven State units of the BJP regarding the activities undertaken by the party at the ground level to help the common people during the pandemic. The Assam BJP unit was one of the seven units selected for participation in the event, said Gupta, who himself gave a presentation during the session.
