New Delhi: The BJP claims it has inducted 10 crore new members less than two months into its ongoing membership drive. This would mean it retains the ‘world’s largest party’ tag it wrested in 2015 from the Chinese Communist Party, which is on course to hit the same membership target by the end of this year.
The states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh inducted the most number of new BJP members in the latest drive, ThePrint has learnt.
Arun Chaturvedi, BJP in-charge of the membership drive in Rajasthan, told ThePrint the party has achieved its target of 10 crore members, and in the next few days, it will reach more than 11 crore. “The drive has started in the few states that were left, like Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir, and it will add to the total count.”
The BJP has also achieved the target faster than in 2014, when the party membership drive lasted for several months to reach the target of 11 crore.
The current membership drive began in September and will wrap up by the end of October. The latest phase, which started on 11 October, will continue until the end of the month, followed by a scrutiny period from 1 to 5 November. Members will receive certificates after donating Rs 100 and if they induct 50 new members in their assembly constituency or at a single booth, becoming active members.
A party membership in-charge in Uttar Pradesh, on condition of anonymity, told ThePrint: “The number could cross 11 crore once the drive ends this month. Two states, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, have become number one and number two states, by inducting more than 2 crore members.”
Now, with the membership drive in the final stage, the party will hold nationwide organisational polls to elect party leaders across local committees, followed by mandal, district, regional, and state committees. The president at each level will nominate a team of office bearers. Once the polls in half the states are completed, elections will be held for the national president, for which election officers were appointed Monday.
BJP president J. P. Nadda held a meeting of all election in-charges and membership drive heads, as well as state presidents in Delhi Monday.
Also Read: BJP set to best Chinese Communist Party again. What it takes to become world’s largest party
UP tops membership drive, Madhya Pradesh second
A BJP leader who is part of a drive in UP told ThePrint, “Uttar Pradesh has become a top state. It has so far inducted 2.5 crore members from the state: 2.25 crore online and another 25 lakh from offline method. This way the Uttar Pradesh unit constitutes 25 percent of the overall BJP membership.”
He added, “Although initially the progress was slow, the energy of the organisation’s general secretary and state president helped to achieve the target. Our aim was to register 75 percent of polled voters of BJP as members, which was achieved.”
According to the UP BJP leader, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak, and Power Minister Arvind Sharma inducted 50,000 members, while Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya has figured in the top 20. Maurya has added more than 20,000 members. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s son and Noida MLA Pankaj Singh has inducted over 30,000 members.
When, on 2 September, the BJP launched the Sakriya Sadasyata Abhiyan 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other leaders renewed their party memberships by enrolling as ‘primary members’.
On the first day of the latest drive, 47 lakh memberships were registered, according to BJP sources. In the first phase, from 2 to 25 September, 6 crore members were registered. Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh each registered over 1 crore members, while Gujarat and Assam enrolled 85 lakh and 50 lakh members, respectively. Smaller states like Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, and Tripura also showed good momentum in member enrollment.
One of central party leaders told ThePrint, “This time the focus was more on quality like enrolling young, Dalit, and women members, so the youth morcha was tasked to enrol youths. All morchas were given target.”
Fraudulent memberships
While enrolling as the first member of the party during the BJP membership drive on 2 September, PM Modi reminded party leaders that the membership drive should not be a “ritual” or a “game of numbers”, but a celebration of new members into the party and it should be an “emotional and ideological” expansion of the party.
But, on the ground, BJP units were pressed to achieve a numerical target.
While the party requires a referral code and One Time Password (OTP) to curb fraudulent induction of new members, several senior BJP leaders hired agencies who were tasked with signing on new members, according to party sources.
From blood donation camps to Durga Pooja bhandaras (feasts), BJP leaders have used several methods to get people to register with the party.
A BJP minister in Uttar Pradesh told ThePrint that he told “health, electricity and transport department employees to enrol as BJP members and even asked outsourcing agencies to use their data bank and numbers to enrol new members”.
While launching the party membership drive in September, BJP president Nadda had a set target of 10 crore members. Since then, he has made trips from one state to another to power membership drives. Similarly, BJP organisational general secretary B.L. Santhosh visited several states where the membership drive was slow.
According to BJP sources, Santhosh was annoyed with the slow progress in Rajasthan and told new state president Madan Rathore that progress was not satisfactory.
Since then, BJP state units have made every effort to achieve their targets and the Madhya Pradesh unit announced last week that it had achieved its target of 1.5 crore new members.
While the PM praised the unit for enrolling so many more members than states with higher populations, the achievement was questioned by state BJP MLA and former minister Ajay Vishnoi.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Vishnoi said he had received a message from an agency offering to increase the party’s membership from his account and took a dig at people trying to rise through the ranks of the party by using this method.
भाजपा के सदस्य बनवाने हैं तो पैसा खर्च कीजिए
आज मेरे फोन पर फोन नंबर +917880298199 से फोन आया। ये एक एजेंसी का फोन था जो मेरे अकाउंट से भाजपा के सदस्य बनाने का ठेका मांग रहा था।
जाहिर है ऐसी और भी एजेंसी होंगी। जिनकी सेवाएं लेकर गणेश परिक्रमा करने वाले आधारहीन नेता संगठन की…
— Ajay Vishnoi (@AjayVishnoiBJP) October 15, 2024
Vishnoi’s claim was backed by several Congress MLAs, including leader of the state opposition Umang Singhar, who said they too had received such messages despite being from a different party. Some Congress MLAs also got FIRs lodged after they were registered as BJP members. State BJP president B.D. Sharma denied the Congress’s allegations, claiming it was not able to back its claims by sharing any information.
However, several cases of fraudulent membership drives have been reported. In Madhya Pradesh, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student organisation affiliated to the RSS, protested against the principal of Holkar Science College allowing BJP leaders to carry out a membership drive on campus, leading the BJP to cancel the drive.
Defending against such accusations, the party membership in-charge from Uttar Pradesh quoted above, told ThePrint, “All membership will undergo scrutiny and only then will active membership be given. In such a big exercise, a few anomalies may exist but the party will verify to end such discrepancies.”
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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