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Bharatiya Janata Party is mulling a special outreach campaign in Kerala in a bid to woo minorities and mount pressure on the State government with a view to focus on the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in 2024.
The campaign will be in line with another mass contact campaign, "Nanni Modi" which means "Thank You Modi", launched on February 28. In the fresh outreach campaign targeting minorities of the State, the party will record testimonies of people, who are beneficiaries of the Central government. "The party is planning so many minority-centric programs, apart from Nanni Modi," a party insider said. In these campaigns, all booth-level Karyakartas are going and meeting local people who are the beneficiaries of the Modi government's different schemes like Kisan Samman Nidhi, Ujjwala Yojana, Pradhanmantri Aawas Yojana. "BJP's aim is to contact the maximum number of beneficiaries, who will express their happiness through a video saying thank you, Modi," the source said. He said that these videos will be uploaded by the party's official handle on several social media platforms and will be shared by several BJP leaders and also in the NAMO app. "Nanni Modi campaign started in Kerala on 28 February 2023 and it will continue till the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. As per our calculation, there is a minimum of 300 families in each booth and out of those 300 families, around 200 families got benefited from the schemes, launched by Modi-government," the source said. "One family is receiving more than six benefits from schemes like Jan Dhan Yojana, Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana, Jalanidhi Yojana, PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, etc," he said. "BJP is planning big for the 2024 election which is why BJP stepping into all the sections of society, especially minorities," the source said. Sharing details of the party's ongoing minority-centric schemes, the source said, "In December, we started the Christian outreach programme and we received very good feedback. In line with this, now we are planning to print some greeting cards and meet Christian families from door to door on the occasion of Easter, April 9. "We will meet Christian families and will go into every street on Easter evening and greet them with the card," he said. A senior Kerala BJP leader said, "the barriers between the Christian community and BJP are narrowing." "Christian Bishop and Father receive our greetings comfortably, he added. "In Kerala, there are around 25,000 booths. Earlier we covered around 4000 booths and will cover more this time and definitely, this will dilute the barriers between us," he said. "Earlier in 'Janmabhoomi', an RSS mouthpiece, we had published Christmas special articles and distributed them to Christian families, Fathers and senior Bishops too," he said. Akin to this, we will also do a Hindu outreach programme on April 15," the BJP leader said. "On the occasion of the 'Vishu' festival, we will invite Christians to Hindus' houses and Vishu together," he said, adding that in Kerala both communities live in harmony. Besides, the party is also planning a Muslim outreach programme, which will start on Eid-ul-Fitr. "According to it, we will connect with the maximum number of people in the community. First of all, we are trying to convey our inclusive culture, and political ideology to all sections of society," the source added. BJP senior source said all these programmes are election strategies of the BJP and these programs started within six months. "The party is also doing so many things to strengthen the organisational thing booth level programme, gathering all the former workers together in our session going there houses reconnecting with them," the source added. He said that the party is throwing all efforts this time to win the maximum number of seats from the State. "The earlier political landscape was different but now everyone knows that there is only one political party, BJP, and only one political leader, Narendra Modi, can give maximum benefit to the public," he said, adding that the people, from all communities, have understood this scenario now and they are in BJP's side. He went on to add that this transition took place because the BJP-led government in the Centre is doing several developments for Kerala people like roads, highways, railways, ports etc. "We can see the example of North East, West Bengal and Goa, where earlier there was no hope but now everything is positive," he added. The BJP did not win a single seat in the Kerala Assembly Elections in 2021 and saw its vote share shrink by 2.6 per cent from 2016. Given the percentage of minorities, particularly Christians in the state, the party is believed to intensify outreach programmes to increase its vote share. (ANI)
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