Two of the main opposition parties in the State, the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), are digitally connecting their top leaderships with ground-level workers.
The initiative is an attempt to strengthen the party structure and improve election management as they get ready to fight the well-organised Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and closely-knit network of activists from the Shiv Sena.
Congress’s Project Shakti is an attempt to connect polling booth workers directly with party president Rahul Gandhi. The project was unveiled in Maharashtra during Mr. Gandhi’s rally in Mumbai three days ago.
Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam said, “Our president wants to directly connect with the workers and Project Shakti is a part of those efforts. This is already in operation in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. It will cover Mumbai and the rest of the State soon.”
Party workers are required to send their voter identity card copy to a mobile number given to them. This database will be stored with the party and the activist will get personalised messages from the president directly. Booth-level activists are being encouraged to register, which party insiders feel will help them plan better during election days. The State Congress has already launched its ‘One booth, 10 youth’ campaign targetting booth committees, each containing at least 10 people.
The NCP, on the other hand, unveiled its internal mobile application in its foundation day rally in Pune last week. It has a nine-stage set up, where district presidents of the party will be registered on the app.
“These district presidents will then have to fill in the next posts and so on. The hierarchy goes up to the booth level. All the data will be available to the State leadership,” said a party leader who is privy to the process.
He said, “It was observed that even though directions were given to form booth committees, nothing was formed on the ground. There were no faces to names sent to us. Now there will be some accountability, and responsibility can be fixed on individuals.”