Hyderabad: BJP takes aim at municipal polls

Hyderabad: The absence of cadre and the voters in the rural areas is worrying the BJP state leaders though they claim to have strengthened the party. Though the leadership attempted to strengthen the party from the grassroots with ‘Palle Palleku BJP (BJP in every village)’, it did not yield results in the December 2018 elections and also in the zilla and mandal parishad elections held in May.

In the Assembly elections, the party lost its deposit in about 100 constituencies. It won just one seat though the party fielded candidates in all 117 constituencies. In the recent zilla and mandal parishad elections, the BJP won eight ZPTCs out of 534 and 208 MPTCs out of more than 5,815.

The state leadership was enthused by the four seats the party won in the Lok Sabha polls and is now looking at attracting the Congress and the TRS cadres in rural areas into the BJP fold.

BJP candidates in Mahbubnagar, Malkaj-giri and Chevella Lok Sabha seats secured a good number of votes in the Lok Sabha elections. With this, the party is planning to take up a membership drive from July 6 and revamp the village, mandal and district level committees it is completed.

Mr N. Ramachandra Rao, senior leader and MLC said, that the BJP has 11 lakh members and the party aims to double it. He told this correspondent that party senior leader and former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan is visiting Hyderabad on June 26 to review the party position in the state and to decide the future strategy to prepare the party to reach its aim of achieving power in the 2023 elections.

Mr Rao said as the Congress was shattered with the desertions, people are now looking at the BJP as an alternative to the TRS and after the Assembly elections, there were a lot change in the mood of the people.

Maintaining that the party has its workers in every booth of the state, he said, “We cannot equate the results of the PR bodies with the Lok Sabha elections. In PR bodies, various local factors including money and liquor play a key role, but in the Lok Sabha polls, it’s the national policy.”

He said that in the urban body elections, the party will win a large number of municipalities. He said the BJP had taken up the intermediate results issue and in the coming days, it will take up agitations on unemployment and farmers’ issues.