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BJP to drive its way to poor in e-rickshaws

BJP sources told DNA that the ‘Chaupal’ microfinance initiative has been speeded up with a view to the 2019 polls

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Nitin Gadkari
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While BJP's poll preparations have often been called a juggernaut, the well-oiled machinery has already started rumbling behind the pall of usual day-to-day politics. As the saffron outfit's electoral gambit starts to take shape, the party is leaving no stones unturned for reaching out to the poor.

In one such move aimed at placating the poorer sections, especially women, ahead of 2019 general elections, the Union Transport and Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari has allied with 'Chaupal', an initiative of the RSS and brainchild of its national general secretary Muralidhar Rao, to distribute e-rickshaws across India.

The campaign of distributing e-rickshaws as a form of extending micro-finance and to empower the women of the poverty-ridden sections of the Indian society would commence from Delhi on October 11.

While the campaign would be extended to other parts of the country, the first leg, after Delhi, would cover Karnal and Panipat in Haryana.

"This is not just going to boost last mile connectivity, but is also going to empower women as earning members of the family. During our initiative, we have witnessed that micro-loans are the best in terms of repayment. We have kept the interest rates low, at five per cent which is just half of what is usually available inside the institutional loan network, but the recovery rate has been 98.5 per cent. This means that people are willing to pay back the loan they take if the burden of interest is not high and we want to use this phenomenon to empower the poor across the country," said Shailendra Sengar, vice-president of the BJP's Kisan Morcha and a member of the Swadeshi Jagaran Foundation that is the umbrella organisation looking after the campaign.

Party sources told DNA that the 'Chaupal' microfinance initiative has been speeded up with a view to the 2019 general elections. It entails that across India small and micro loans would be given to the poor and to existing self-help groups (SHG) or new ones which would be formed under the initiative.

It has already been in action in the Prime Minister's constituency in Varanasi in UP. Apart from Varanasi, other areas in which the campaign is to concentrate are Union Minister Nitin Gadkari's constituency Nagpur as well as Indore, which is Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan's constituency. Jamshedpur, Panipat and Karnal, Raipur and Bhopal etc too are concentration areas for the campaign.

So far loans have been distributed by significant political figures and ministers of the Union government such as Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah and Smriti Irani.

POLL INITIATIVE

  • BJP sources told DNA that the ‘Chaupal’ microfinance initiative has been speeded up with a view to the 2019 polls.
     
  • The campaign would be extended to other parts of the country soon.
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