TRS to micro-manage voters

NAVEENA GHANATE
Hyderabad

Flush with the success of ‘Page Committees’ engaged at the booth level in the Munugode bypoll, Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has decided to replicate the concept across the state.

The ‘Page committee’ strategy aims at booth-level penetration. Brainchild of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the strategy was first used by the BJP successfully in the 2007 Gujarat Assembly polls and has since been replicated by the saffron party during all subsequent polls. As for the BJP panels, the ‘page’ signifies the front and back of a voters’ list consisting of the names of nearly 30 voters. A ‘panna (page) pramukh’ acts as the head of each such voters list.

KCR has asked his party MLAs to appoint in-charges for every 100 voters in their constituency. The lists of in-charges will be sent to party leadership, which will monitor their activities after assigning them specific tasks.The TRS has an army of 60 lakh people who are registered with the party.  KCR says that for a state with 3.5 crore population, 60 lakh members will be easily able to do micro-level booth management as part of the overall strategy.

The TRS deployed about 2,260 people in Munugode to execute its micro-level booth management strategy. Each person is assigned about 100 voters on the lines of the BJP’s Panna Pramukh. Sources said that these members have to reach out to the 100 voters under their charge and highlight the TRS government’s schemes. It builds on the Panna Pramukh concept by involving village level volunteers like in AP. Sources said that the in-charges must ensure that voters are loyal to the pink party, and if they are not TRS voters already, they should convert bring them into party fold.

Sources pointed out that the concept of using 1 in-charge for 100 voters worked well for the TRS initially in the MLC elections and again in the recent bypoll.”Since we are starting early on, we will be constantly updating them about the schemes of the party. And for the beneficiaries it will be a reminder. Our CM asked us to create a progress card of our constituencies. Even the Atmeeya Sammelan was a big success in the Munugode bypoll.

So, we are directed to conduct it on a large scale.Already many of our MLAs go to people’s residences and give cheques of Kalyana Lakshmi, CMRF or others. So, this will probably be an extension of the doorstep services”.

It may be mentioned here that in Munugode these in-charges sent reports every day on their activities with the voters assigned to them. Sources said that this micro-level booth management strategy ensures that the party touches all voters and makes sure that there is deeper penetration at the booth level.

Even for the upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections, the BJP is continuing to implement the Page Committee strategy. It has taken it one level up by setting up Panna Samithis for the elections.They are like influencers in each family who can motivate other people to vote for BJP. While the Panna pramukh is responsible for 30 people in Gujarat, in the Panna samiti model, one person is responsible for every five or six voters.The belief is that these committees will ensure a minimum 60 per cent of votes of the page in its favour.