BJP top brass to discuss membership drive on June 17

As the BJP sets an ambitious target to increase its membership by one-fifth of its existing 11 crore mark in next three years, the party is cautious enough to fix the glitches it faced during the mobile missed call membership drive last time.

Detailed plans on how to carry out the membership drive beginning July 6 will be discussed in a high-level meeting of the party on June 17 in which party Chief and Home Minister Amit Shah will also be present.

Once bitten twice shy, the BJP will put in a mechanism to verify its mobile missed call membership by ensuring that newly-inducted members from the targeted 2.2 crores for the party are also required to fill up forms as an additional authentication exercise.

Party cadres will be pressed into service to verify the members enrolled through the process of mobile missed calls. The party’s claim of enrolling 11 crore members in 2014 had proved wrong, as it was found that at least 20 million (two crore) of them were bogus. Such members will be weeded during the verification process, that entails filling up of a membership form.

During the 35-days special membership drive called “Sangathan Parva” (Festival of Organisation) of the party, the party is targeting many of the hitherto out of bound regions of the BJP, particularly in deep South.

The party will be focussing on Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Pondicherry, Odisha, West Bengal and Kashmir valley. An active members’ drive will also be launched from August 16 to August 31. Regular membership will remain open for individuals till January 31.