After giving senior leaders key election responsibilities in the states, the BJP also announced Sunday 17 groups ahead of the 2019 polls. (File)Stepping up its preparations for the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP Sunday appointed Home Minister Rajnath Singh chairman of its manifesto committee and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was named the head of the publicity committee. Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari will lead a team to coordinate with social and non-governmental organisations.
After giving senior leaders key election responsibilities in the states, the BJP also announced Sunday 17 groups ahead of the 2019 polls, with an emphasis on communication. Signalling that the crucial elections will be fought with cooperation from all leaders, party president Amit Shah has distributed responsibility to almost all senior and key leaders.
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External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has been given charge of the content generation team, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will oversee the activities of the media group. The social media committee will be headed by party secretary Shyam Jaju, who also leads the group for publicity material distribution.
The Rajnath Singh-led manifesto committee has Union ministers Arun Jaitley, Nirmala Sitharaman, Thaawar Chand Gehlot, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Piyush Goyal, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, K J Alphons, Kiren Rijiju, Bihar Minister Sushil Modi, former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, senior leaders Arjun Munda, Ram Madhav, Bhupendra Yadav, Narayan Rane, Meenakshi Lekhi, Sanjay Paswan, Hari Babu and Rajendra Mohan Singh Cheema as its members.
The manifesto committee ahead of the 2014 elections was headed by Murli Manohar Joshi and it had members like Yashwant Sinha, P K Dhumal, Shahnawaz Hussain and V K Malhotra. In 2014, the party also had a committee to pen a vision document headed by Gadkari.
Since the party leadership often asserts that welfare measures and programs of the Narendra Modi government have to be communicated effectively, Shah has formed a number of groups for publicity. Among the 17 groups, there are committees for publicity, content generation, media, social media, beneficiary-contact, intellectuals contact, campaign material distribution, and mann ki baat – all focussed on communication.
New committees have been formed to step up and coordinate the current campaigns such as beneficiary meetings (mobilising beneficiaries of government-run programmes), intellectual and prominent people’s meetings, Kamal Jyoti (making party symbol lotus familiar), mera Parivar-BJP parivar (roping in families to the party fold) and bike rallies (for the youth).
A leader known for his cross-party contacts, Gadkari is heading a group of leaders to coordinate different social groups and NGOs. During his term as party president, the BJP had formed around 40 cells to reach out to different sections of society. Party general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya is also part of this group. BJP general secretary Arun Singh will be in charge of the central party office, travel and logistic.
