To beat the anti-incumbency of 15 years in the municipal corporations in the national capital, the BJP will be sending a team of 2,500 ‘vistarak’ to expand the party at the grassroots level.
These vistaraks will spend seven to eight hours daily for a month in each municipal ward to cement the party’s position among the people. Elections for three Municipal Corporations of Delhi (MCD) will be held next year.
As per the plan, a group of seven to 10 vistarak will be given the responsibility of a municipal ward and they will spend daily to seven to 10 hours in their assigned areas for a month. There are 272 municipal wards in the three municipal corporations. “Currently the vistarak programme will be launched for a month in October and the date for launch will be decided in a couple of days,” a BJP Delhi functionary said.
It is also learnt that BJP national general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santhosh will hold an interactive and motivational session with these 2,500 vistarak selected by the party local unit.
Another senior BJP Delhi leader said that vistarak will also tell the people about the works of party-ruled municipal corporations in the last 15 years despite unfavourable state government. “Our political rivals blame MCDs for not doing anything to make people’s lives better, but they are one to be held responsible. Earlier Congress government and now AAP government are deliberately weakening the civic bodies. To make the MCDs financially weak, both the governments never gave due funds as recommended by the Delhi Finance Corporation (DFC),” he said.
The saffron party has been ruling the municipal corporation since 2007 and is facing a strong challenge from Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the next polls.
In the last municipal polls in 2017, to beat the anti-incumbency, the saffron party denied tickets to all the sitting councillors.
However, the BJP has still to finalise the formula for the candidate selection for the next municipal polls, which helped the party to win 181 out of total 272 municipal seats in three corporations last time. The AAP had won 49 seats and the Congress came third by winning only 31 seats in 2017 municipal polls.