J P Nadda reviews BJP membership drive amidst reports of tepid response

New Delhi: BJP President JP Nadda on Monday presided over a meeting of 400 party workers on Monday to review the membership program amidst reports of tepid response. The party’s membership programme, which has garnered 10 crore members till now, will now move on to the next leg to recruit active members. 

Apart from Nadda, general secretaries BL Santosh, Vinod Tawde, and Dushyant Gautam were present at the review meeting. The meeting also saw the attendance of the office bearers of the Central Election Committee, state election office bearers, national office bearers of the BJP, state presidents, and organisational secretaries. 

Sources said that Monday’s meeting was held to act as a review of the drive. While the party had managed to make 11 crore new members in the last such drive in 2018, taking the total membership of the party to 18 crores, this time the process has been slow. 

The third leg of the campaign, which started on October 11, will go on till the end of the month. Sources said that the process will go through a scrutiny from November 1 to 5.

At the meeting, attendees said that Nadda stressed on workers getting more members. “We are the only party that holds elections for the position of a booth committee member up till the national president,” he told attendees, stressing that 

The meeting also had a workshop being carried out to facilitate membership of active members. Last week, on Wednesday, kicking off the active membership campaign, prime minister Narendra Modi had posted on X that an active member is one who registers 50 members either at a single booth or in a Vidhan Sabha seat. 

“Such Karyakartas will be eligible to contest elections for a Mandal Committee and above. At the same time, they will get many opportunities to work for the party in the times to come,” his post read.

An attendee at Monday’s programme said that the focus of this leg of the campaign will be to find dedicated leaders. “After this campaign ends, elections to the Mandal, district, state, and national levels will take place,” the leader said. 

The organisational elections are the precursor to the election of the party president in January. At the workshop, leaders were also made privy to tools and strategies for effective election management, the leader said. Apart from that, at Monday’s meeting Nadda also discussed the election of party leaders across various organisational levels.