With only around five months to go until the 2021 West Bengal assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has formed a 117-member electoral management team as part of the largest electoral machinery the party has ever established in the state.
The team has been divided into 31 units, each of which addresses a particular aspect of party voting preparations during the campaign: coordination, data collection, booth management and social media management, etc.
“While some cells comprise multiple state leaders, including MPs and MLA, and have a party veteran in charge and co-responsible for them, some cells have only one state leader,” said a BJP leader.
The BJP is buoyed by its impressive advances in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, in which it won 40% of the vote and won 18 out of 42 seats in the state.
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Elections for the 294-member state assembly are expected sometime around April and May.
The state machinery would function under the supervision of the Union Minister of the Interior, Amit Shah, and the head of the BJP, JP Nadda. Shah and Nadda are expected to camp in West Bengal for a few days each month until the elections.
The BJP sent five of its central leaders for the first time to take stock of the party’s organizational readiness down to the cabin level.
BJP officials said 294 leaders will come to Bengal from Delhi and other states to work with the local unit. They would be part of 45-member teams to be established for each constituency.
The BJP has also appointed an independent media team to appear in television interviews.
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