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With the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) gaining an 'edge' over its rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has put in its entire resources in Delhi to ensure the saffron party's victory in the Assembly elections.
With only a few hours left for voting, the Sangh parivar organisations are putting up a spirited fight, leaving nothing to chance. The BJP has fanned out Union ministers, workers and leaders from different states and communities to various seats, depending on their demographic profile, to reach out to different constituencies.
Initially, there were rumours that the RSS was not happy with the "unilateral announcement" of Kiran Bedi as the chief ministerial candidate, as it "had other plans". But AAP's surge has made the Sangh parivar nervous and RSS sahsarkaryavah Krishna Gopal had to intervene to plug the gaps in the coordination.
"We are taking this election very seriously. AAP has managed to create hype, but on the ground, the situation is not discouraging for us after the Sangh put its full energy into the campaign," said a district-level BJP leader.
As AAP draws its major support from slumdwellers and economically weaker sections, the Sangh cadres have been working on a multi-pronged strategy. It built up a parallel campaign structure in each constituency without disturbing the existing BJP setup. Sangh pracharaks and senior functionaries were made coordinators and they used to directly deal with the BJP leadership.
These coordinators designed area-specific strategies and communicate the requirement to the BJP leadership.
Slums were a difficult terrain for the BJP. Therefore, the Sangh appointed functionaries of Seva Bharati, an RSS-affiliated organisation working in slums, as coordinators in East Delhi constituencies where there are large number of slum clusters.
Workers from different states were brought in on the basis of the demographic profile of the constituency. For instance, in Trilokpuri, which witnessed communal riots, the Sangh deployed Sadhvis from neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh to campaign. A slum cluster in Trilokpuri has about 4,000 Tamils. The BJP brought in activists from Tamil Nadu. Likewise, a Maharashtrian minister conducted door-to-door campaign among a few hundred Marathi families. Union minister Krishnapal Gujjar has been drafted in to the campaign the area. His Cabinet colleague Venkaih Naidu had addressed a couple of meetings. The local MP and other members of Parliament have been holding rallies and meetings in various parts of the constituency.
The BJP's strategy has also been to engineer a split in the AAP. The BJP pulled off a major victory on Thursday, when nine senior functionaries of the AAP, including some founding members, joined the saffron party. They include founder-members Jagdeesh Dhinkar, Gulshan Kumar, Kalka Prasad, Raju, Brijendra Premi (APP's SC/ST Cell district coordinator) among others. "This is a major victory for us, as they were very active members. Some of them have already been working for us. They will be dispatched to AAP pockets," said a senior Sangh functionary.
The BJP is also persuading independent candidates to announce their support in favour of the party.
"We have been able to convince many of them. Last time, we lost in as many as 10 seats with a margin less than 1,000 votes. This time, we will not allow this to happen," he added.
