Mumbai, June 27: Three months after the launch of its membership drive, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) is expecting to double its members, indicating a jump in membership figures since the last state Assembly elections.
The membership drive was launched on MNS’s fourth foundation day on March 9 this year by party chief Raj Thackeray. During the earlier membership drive, MNS had recorded a membership of around six lakh through its network spread mostly in urban pockets of the state.
This year, the party workers collating the figures now are expecting the numbers to double.
MNS general secretary Shirish Sawant, who is handling the membership drive, said that 15 lakh forms worth Rs 2 each had been sold till the end of the drive. Of these, the party expected at least 12 lakh formed to be filled and submitted. “We have already received about eight lakh forms. Another three to four lakh forms are expected which will definitely be an increase in the membership figures for the party,” said Sawant. He added that reducing the membership form fee to Rs 2 from Rs 5 during the latest membership drive had helped sell more forms.
During the last two year, MNS has witnessed phenomenal growth with 13 of its candidates being elected in the first-ever Assembly elections contested by the party, and over a lakh votes to each of their 12 Lok Sabha candidates which sounded the death knell for the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance’s hopes of coming back to power.
“The membership drive has received tremendous response due to Marathi-related programmes we took up at the time of the membership,” said Anil Shidore, in charge of the party’s Marathi bhasha academy in Pune. Membership figures and analysis is being done at the institute.
MNS had launched a week-long Marathi language festival in February and distributed a three-page letter by Raj Thackeray to people asking them to be proud of being Marathi.
“We have previously received tremendous response in the urban pockets and locations where we had fielded MLA candidates. Surprisingly, in Vidarbha and parts of Marathwada where we were not so strong the response has been good,” said Shidore.
Shidore credits the spread of the party network to all 33 districts in the state to proper appointments of posts which have helped the party increase its outreach.
“When we travelled in Vidarbha, we got immense response from youth there. We were surprised ourselves,” he said.
Among the three major Opposition parties in the state, BJP and Shiv Sena also launched their membership drives around the same time as MNS. Both, Sena and BJP, recorded 32 lakh and 34 lakh member registration respectively in their drives and improved their count significantly.
——-Agencies