Palani: BJP has decided to use the forthcoming local body elections in Tamil Nadu for strengthening the party base at the grassroots level. Admitting that BJP had not performed upto expectations in the recently held state assembly election, the party National General secretary P. Muralidhar Rao said it is only through strengthening the party base at the grassroots level that they can reach out to the people.
“We will use the local body election effectively to register the party symbol in the people's mind,” he said while interacting with reporters on the sidelines of the BJP state executive committee meeting held at Palani on Friday. He also clarified that the party would face the local body election alone.
Claiming that BJP’s performance was good in Chennai, Coimbatore and Madurai in the Assembly election, Rao said, “It is the only non-Dravidian party that gained more votes in all these towns and we want to build up on it.”
When reporters asked about whether the party has analysed the reasons for failure in the assembly election, “I wouldn’t call it as a failure, rather I would say we haven’t performed to expectations.” “You can call it as failure only if we had won in the previous elections. In the last election also we didn’t win,” he said adding that they have expected to perform better in the election, but that has not happened.
“We thought BJP had a better opportunity because of multicornered contests in the election, but that didn’t happen. Instead there was intense polarisation of votes between the two Dravidian parties,” he admitted.
“Moreover, DMK allying with Congress created a kind of atmosphere that even our voters felt if BJP didn’t field a candidate, it is better to prefer AIADMK,” said Rao.
But in the constituencies where BJP fielded strong candidates and conducted good campaign, the party had performed better, he said. While admitting that ‘missed call’ system introduced to induct more members into the party did not yield positive responses, Rao said, “That is why we are now focusing on strengthening the party at grassroots level.”
To achieve this, the BJP has also decided to conduct extensive outreach programme across the state to create awareness among the people on the Central government schemes and also listen to their grievances in coming months.
The party would also elect new office bearers for various wings in the executive meeting to work with the people. And a national level party leader would also visit Chennai in the first in second week of July to discuss with party cadres to evolve strategies to strengthen the party in the coming months in TN.
