Mangaluru: With an eye on the forthcoming panchayati raj body, and in a bid to decentralise its functioning, the state unit of the BJP is all set to roll out ‘pancha ratna’ samitis in the run up to the gram panchayat elections. These samitis will form local level decision making units, just below the ‘shakti kendras’ that hitherto handled such issues. The five-member samiti, along with the larger booth committee, will micro manage party affairs at the booth level.
The brainchild of Nalin Kumar Kateel, state BJP president, these samitis will be set up in all 56,000 polling booths across Karnataka, Mahesh Tenginkai, state general secretary (organisation), said. In a chat with TOI, Mahesh said such samitis have already been set up in 16 party organisational districts across Karnataka.
Each samiti will be headed by the booth president and assisted by the deputy, a woman, OBC and SC or ST representative. These samiti members will not contest elections, but ensure unanimity of views on candidates that the party will back. “At present, we have around 35% of share of total gram panchayat wards, which we intend to take up to 65% after the next GP polls,” he said.
The pancha ratna samitis will work in coordination with the booth committees to identify potential candidates, iron out flash points that aspirants may cause, and bring all on board to ensure maximum party backed candidates win the polls. Once the candidate is finalised, they in turn will fall back to the page pramukhs, who will ensure that every single voter in the voter list given to them for a particular ward, backs the party candidate, he noted.
We tried the same for the recent MLC elections, by giving this responsibility to the ‘ghata pramukh’, where they focussed on a cluster of households of voters, in taking home the message of various central and state government schemes, he said. The party has also followed this up with family meetings, a two-hour meet where all important ward and booth level influencers were brought on board, and given responsibility to ensure electoral success for the BJP, he said.