The BJP in Maharashtra is gearing up to collect iron pieces from every village for prime ministerial nominee Narendra Modi’s ambitious project to construct a massive Statue of Unity of India’s first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
Gujarat chief minister Modi, who is seeking to aggressively claim the legacy of Iron Man Patel has planned the 182-metre statue, which is planned so that it will be taller than the Statue of Liberty.
This will be constructed on the Sadhu Bet riverbed near the Sardar Sarovar dam in Gujarat.
In its meeting on Thursday, the Maharashtra BJP executive committee decided to launch a drive to collect pieces of iron taken from the ploughs and used farm implements of farmers in the 27,906 gram panchayats covering 43,663 villages in the state. Around 54.8% of Maharashtra’s population resides in villages.
“We will go to each village and gram panchayat in Maharashtra,” Maharashtra BJP president and MLA Devendra Fadnavis told dna.
The iron collection drive will begin in December after the conclusion of the state legislature’s winter session at Nagpur. BJP leaders said reaching out to villages in the state was also a political opportunity before the Lok Sabha and state assembly polls due next year.
The BJP also plans to get Modi to Maharashtra to hold four public meetings from December to March in Mumbai, North Maharashtra, Marathwada and Vidarbha. Modi is likely to address BJP booth level workers in December at Mumbai, kicking off its campaign in the state for the Lok Sabha elections.
The state executive also reviewed the setting up of booth committees in all 81,000 electoral booths in the state, barring constituencies and areas where it does not contest the polls. Booth committees consisting of a chief and at least 10 activists per booths have already been established in around 60,000 booths.
The party hopes that Modi’s combination of Hindutva and development— Moditva for party faithfuls - will help it consolidate its vote base and reach out to an auxiliary constituency and youth voters.
Leaders admit that to come to power in New Delhi, the BJP needs to notch up higher gains in urban centres in Maharashtra like Mumbai, Pune, Thane, Nashik and Nagpur, where the Shiv Sena- BJP face a tough challenge from the ruling Congress-NCP and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). The BJP also hopes to replace the Shiv Sena as the dominant partner in the saffron alliance.
In 2009, the BJP and the Shiv Sena got just 9 and 11 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra as compared to the Congress and NCP’s tally of 17 and 8. The saffron alliance lost in nine constituencies, including five in Mumbai, due to the presence of the Raj Thackeray-led MNS in the fray.
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