BJP chants booth mantra, tastes success

BENGALURU: It’s a sweet victory in every way for the BJP. For the first time, it has won the Sira assembly segment, and its debutant has defeated the veteran Congress candidate. BJP which started literally from scratch as it had no party base there tasted triumph, thanks to the efforts of leaders like B Y Vijayendra, party state vice president, and party state secretary and senior MLC N Ravikumar. Ravikumar, who camped in Sira for close to two months, said they adopted party national leader Amit Shah’s concept of ‘Agar booth jitega, toh constituency jitega’ (If we win the booth, we will win the constituency).

BJP hardly got 8 to 9 per cent votes in previous elections. This time, its candidate Dr Rajesh Gowda won by a margin of 13,414 votes against Congress veteran T B Jayachandra. Speaking to TNIE, Ravikumar said he visited all the 264 booths in Sira. “I spoke to local leaders, won their trust, created booth-level committees and formed a WhatsApp group,” he said.

They mapped out a strategy for the booths, which was largely dependent on the ‘Page Pramukh’ concept, where one page of the voters’ list from each booth was given to a BJP worker. Each page had a list of voters from 10 to 12 families. The Page Pramukh’s job was to ensure that these voters reached the booth and voted for the BJP. Though the date for the Maski bypoll is not announced, Ravikumar has been told to start the ground work. He will be heading to Maski constituency after November 13.