Lucknow, November 04: While the Congress is making photographs compulsory in their membership form, the BJP, which concluded its membership campaign on September 25, is still relying on the old method of making entries with details in registers to avoid bogus membership.
Since October first week, the party has sent out teams in different districts to cross-check the membership. In order to increase the communication with the members, the party, for the first time, has decided to call their members randomly and ask them to speak about party issues.
“We haven’t introduced the system of photographs as yet, but since our membership verification forms are quite exhaustive, we are expecting that it will be able to curb bogus membership to a large extent,” said Mahendra Singh, BJP general secretary and in-charge of the party’s membership campaign.
Having enrolled around 2.5 lakh members on paper, with verification drive on to check the actual numbers, the party is quite hopeful of getting a good support.
The verification form is quite exhaustive, involving basic details like name, father’s name, address and area, educational qualification, booth number, slip number in the voter’s list.
“You can fake details like name and address, but what about the booth number and the voter’s list number? It is not easy to create fake slip numbers as we are verifying them with the voter’s lists ourselves,” said Singh.
During this year’s membership campaign, the party is also including telephone numbers of the members. “During verifications, our team members randomly call a member and ask them to attend party meetings and elections,” said Singh.
While the common membership verification drive is on, the party is also sorting out its active memberships. City unit worker Avdhesh Gupta said while the general membership has a fee of Rs 5, the active membership has a fee of Rs 200 and can be acquired if one enrolls 50 members. “This time, the party is checking all the 50 members in the list before handing out active memberships. Active members are those who can be a part of the voting process in the party meetings,” said Gupta.
According to Singh, while general membership can be checked by the booth workers themselves, the active membership is being verified and certified by seniors or workers from the state unit. “Our active workers have an important role to play and they can also contest internal elections as well as become office bearers of different cells,” said Singh.
“It is important for us to ensure that the active workers are dedicated and can bring in more genuine people,” added Singh. Party press secretary Hero Bajpai said: “With more and more youth and even rural people joining in, we are quite hopeful that we will find good support in the next elections.”
“Since the party’s elections are also round the corner, we may see a host of new faces emerging from these membership drives,” added Bajpai.
—–Agencies