Hisar: RSS ‘helped’ BJP micro-manage elections

Tribune News Service

Deepender Deswal

Hisar, May 24

The BJP left no stone unturned in the last leg of electioneering with the support of the RSS cadre as well as the silent support of the controversial jailed godman, Rampal, in the Hisar Lok Sabha constituency.

3k persons deployed across Hisar

• According to sources, around 3,000 persons from the RSS and other bodies have been deployed across Hisar.
• BJP candidate from the Hisar Lok Sabha seat Ranjit Singh said he had the backing of the RSS in the final phase of electioneering. He said, “RSS ne mera election sambhal liya hai (The RSS has taken care of my elections).”

Sources revealed that workers of the BJP and the RSS had fanned out across the constituency to persuade voters who were upset with the party though had voted for it in past. The RSS workers were reportedly working in the supervisory role at the block and district levels without coming in limelight, the sources added.

They said micro-management had further broken down from the ‘panna’ management to house-to-house marking of voters. The ruling ‘clique’ had taken the support of experts to accomplish the task. Notably, BJP candidate from the Hisar Lok Sabha seat Ranjit Singh had a difficult phase when party leaders, including former MP Kuldeep Bishnoi and former state minister Capt Abhimanyu, did not show up for campaigning for a long time until the BJP leadership intervened and roped in both leaders.

The sources said the backroom team of the party zeroed in on the families that were feeling alienated on the basis of feedback gathered by another team. Then, the inputs were discussed by the strategists, who found a way out to persuade the disgruntled lot by approaching them through their relatives or by giving assurances if they were upset for some specific reason like any of their ‘work’ got stuck in the administration or the government where they had expected the support of BJP people.

A management expert of an election management company, which had been assigned the work to supervise five Lok Sabha seats in Haryana, said that the party had outsourced the work of survey and gathering feedback from the ground to them. “The Central leadership assigned specific tasks to our firm, which took feedback from the ground. The party took our recommendations seriously. For example, we provided inputs that there is need for the visit of Bhajan Lal Sharma in Rohtak and a meeting of Manohar Lal Khattar with the Punjabi community of Hisar. The party acted on the advice,” he said. There were also many third-party assignments.

The BJP also got the backing of the followers of controversial ‘godman’ Rampal. The sources said his supporters had participated in Home Minister Amit Shah’s rally in Hisar on May 20.

A ‘Seh Zila Sangh Chalak’ said the RSS workers had no political role in the elections. “We held drawing room meetings of selected workers and discussed the jobs of various political parties. We don’t ask workers to vote for any specific party,” he claimed.

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