Bengaluru: The BJP Saturday will embark on a massive drive to enrol 10 million people as its members in Karnataka over the next three months, party president Amit Shah said Saturday.
“As our main objective is to free Karnataka from the Congress rule, we have set a target of enlisting one crore (10 million) voters as our members by March. We have also launched an online drive to enrol even youth as our members,” he told reporters here.
Noting Karnataka was the only big state in which Congress was in power, Shah said the state had elected 17 Bharatiya Janata Party MPs, enabling the party secure a majority in Lok Sabha and form the government.
Out of the southern state’s 28 Lok Sabha constituencies, the Congress won nine and Janata Dal-Secular two.
“It is important for us to rebuild the party in the state and win back the people’s confidence to unseat Congress in the next assembly elections. The membership drive will help us in strengthening the party and expand its base in the state,” Shah said.
Party’s state unit president Prahlad Joshi said the party would enrol 10 lakh members in the first phase of membership drive Jan 10-11, 25 lakh in second phase Jan 24-25 and achieve the one crore target by March.
“Besides the membership drive, the party’s core committee, which met here today (Saturday) under the leadership of Shah, has decided to launch an agitation against the Congress government’s attempt to take over religious institutions (mutts) across the state through an amendment bill and dilute the prevention of cow slaughter and protection law through another bill and for reducing bus fares by state-run transport corporations following reduction in diesel prices,” Joshi told reporters.
The BJP, which has set a 10 crore membership target by March across the country, has enrolled 295,000 people till date.
Describing the state’s Congress government as non-performing, corrupt and defunct, Shah called upon the people to free the state from it.
In a press conference, he alleged that the state’s economy had been crippled under the Congress “misrule” and the growth rate had declined to five percent from 10 percent during the previous BJP rule.
“The youth of Karnataka have become unemployed after the Congress came to power and the condition of farmers is very poor, with 77 percent agricultural households indebted,” Shah asserted.
The Congress returned to power in the state after a decade by securing a majority (122) in the 225-member house in the May 2013 legislative assembly elections, defeating the BJP which ruled the state for the first time on its own since May 2008.
