New Delhi:
Narendra Modi's stamp was written all over on Friday as BJP announced its Election Campaign Committee for 2014 polls including top leaders Murli Manohar Joshi, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley who will work under him.
The 12-member Committee to which Modi was appointed as chairperson in Goa last month will also have other senior leaders including M Venkaiah Naidu, Nitin Gadkari, besides Chief Ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Raman Singh (Chhattisgarh) and Manohar Parrikar (Goa).
This committee will be assisted by 20 sub-committees which will concentrate on various aspects of electioneering including rallies, publicity, manifesto, reaching out to the youth through social media, courting first time voters, "crowd sourcing", and preparing a vision document of its programmes and a "chargesheet" against the UPA rule.
"All the sub-committees will be steered under the leadership of Narendra Modi... The party has given Modi the responsibility of 2014 elections... Under his leadership the whole campaign will move forward," BJP General Secretary Ananth Kumar said.
The Election Campaign Committee and the sub-committees will work under the overall "guidance" of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L K Advani and party President Rajnath Singh, he added.
Gadkari has been asked to pay "special attention" to Delhi in the forthcoming Assembly elections.
Navjot Singh Sidhu, Amritsar MP, will assist Gadkari.
The Campaign Committee and the sub-committees have been formed by Modi and Rajnath Singh in consultation with other senior leaders.
Murli Manohar Joshi has been appointed as head of the manifesto committee which will have Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, former Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal, Sushil Kumar Modi, Shahnawaz Hussain and V K Malhotra, among others, as members.
A vision document will also be released with the manifesto. To be prepared under the guidance of Gadkari, with Vinay Sahasrabuddhe as a member, the document will highlight the achievements of erstwhile NDA government.
The publicity for the party- including in electronic and print media, outdoor campaign- will be handled by Swaraj and Jaitley who will be helped by General Secretary Amit Shah and Sudanshu Trivedi.
Among the "innovative" efforts at wooing voters is BJP's special focus on the "emerging population"- the first time and new voters who form 20 per cent of the electorate. Amit Shah, Poonam Mahajan, Sidhu and Trivendra Rawat will handle this.
BJP plans to organise over 100 rallies, starting from August, in the run-up to the elections. These rallies will be planned and executed by Ananth Kumar and general secretary Varun Gandhi.
The party's attempts to mobilise support among different communities like weavers, farmers, peasants and labourers, fishermen and so on through targeted conferences will be organised by general secretary Murlidhar Rao. Vinay Katiyar, Shyam Jaju, and Vijay Sonkar Shastri will assist him.
BJP will reach out to the professionals- doctors, CAs, engineers and so on- through a team comprising of Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Prakash Javadekar and others.
