BJP 'vistaraks' to get fresh feedback from constituencies in UP

Lucknow, Nov 20 (IANS) The BJP in Uttar Pradesh will now deploy ‘vistaraks’ in all 403 Assembly seats, apart from 80 Lok Sabha seats, to accelerate preparations for the 2024 general elections.

A ‘vistarak’ is a full-time party functionary entrusted with the job of gathering independent ground level feedback about the political situation from a parliamentary and assembly constituency.

Sources said that the BJP has sought a fresh ground level input regarding effective implementation and impact of various public welfare schemes initiated by the Centre and the state government and the performance of the MPs and the MLAs in their respective constituencies.

This input which is expected to start pooling in from December will factor prominently in BJP’s electoral strategy besides determining the election of candidates and the fate of the sitting MPs.

The move also coincides with BJP plans of asking its MPs to start giving their ‘report cards' pertaining to their own performance in the last five years.

The MPs, sources said, will have to tell how much they reached out to the public. They will have to tell how many schemes they started in their parliamentary constituency, the status of schemes launched by the Central and state governments, how much MP Local Area Development Fund has been spent and how much is left.

Notably, the idea of deploying ‘vistarak’ was first mooted by Union Home Minister Amit Shah during his stint as the state in charge of the BJP before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, which saw the BJP 73 out of 80 parliamentary seats in Uttar Pradesh.

According to a senior BJP functionary, the idea was to fill in the voids which are often left unattended.

“The vistaraks have also been asked to work in close coordination with the organizational functionaries to bolster party’s footprints in assigned areas,” he said.

The role of ‘vistaraks’, sources said, will be critically important in the 14 Lok Sabha seats which the BJP lost in the 2019 national elections when the SP and the BSP forged an alliance.

Even as the two regional outfits snapped ties, the BJP managed to win Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats in subsequent by polls.

Experts said that the BJP was also keen to get threadbare pointers amid an aggressive positioning by the opposition especially the Congress and the SP, the two key constituents of the INDIA opposition bloc.