There is no doubt that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate M. Raghunandan Rao, party activists and leaders of all rungs sweated to secure the sensational victory in Dubbak byelection. General public are aware of them. What is not known to the outside world is about the army of activists that spread out to interior parts of the constituency and worked silently.
With the State Chief Minister hailing from the same district under which Dubbak falls, strategists of top parties believed there is little they could do in the district to turn voters to their side. But the BJP State organising secretary Manthri Srinivas, who rarely appears in media or in public platforms, had his own plans.
At his behest, Siddipet district in-charge P. Papa Rao started working to gain foothold in the district for over three years. “The ground work we had been doing by forming mandal-level committees in entire districts yielded results and attempting to reach out to each house paid dividends in the byelection,” the BJP workers said.
The unexpected byelection gave them an opportunity to test the quality of work they were doing to improve party’s performance. Mr. Raghunandan Rao, who had contested twice from the constituency, had built up a network of activists. But that was not sufficient to emerge victorious over the ‘powerful and prosperous’ the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi.
So, they constituted booth-level committees. If there are 750 to 1,000 voters in a polling booth, there would be nearly 200 to 250 families. Each booth-level committee member was assigned the task of personally meeting every family, talking to them and finding out their difficulties.
“And most importantly convince them about the benefits of schemes of the BJP-led government at the Centre,” the activists said. They made it point to attract youngsters even in remote villages to turn to their side and work for them. As the byelection was announced, each of the top leaders was asked to focus on one specific mandal of the constituency.
For example leaders like Dharma Rao, Yendla Laxminarayana, Chada Suresh Reddy and Mothkupally Narsimhulu concentrated on specific mandals. Not stopping at this, on an average 50 dedicated party workers were brought to each mandal from outside the constituency for campaigning.
They stayed for nearly three weeks in the areas assigned to them, working out plans and carrying out door-to-door campaign. Moreover, party’s young workers cleverly exploited the situations of police inspections by using social media. What was an inspection for police was shown as a harassment by the social media team. The team ensured all such instances had gone viral on various social media.
The goal was clear, that all situations should be turned to the advantage of their party. And they achieved it.
