BJP woos Bihari voters across country with 'Ek Bharat Shrestha Bharat' campaign

New Delhi: The BJP is seeking to woo migrant workers from Bihar in the run-up to the assembly election due later this year. It is running a campaign, 'Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat', connecting with the people of Bihari origin residing in different states across the country.

Besides, in March, the party organised Bihar Diwas celebrations at 65 locations where senior BJP leaders participated in programmes with non-resident Biharis. The party has listed 150 districts across the country and 75 dedicated teams have been tasked with collecting and mapping the data of Bihari voters, said people familiar with the matter. BJP general secretary Tarun Chug is in charge of the initiative and senior Bihar leaders as well as Union and state ministers are involved in the outreach programme, they said. The party has divided the outreach into two categories - 'voter' and 'supporter'. "There are people registered as voters in Bihar and there are some who have moved out but are supporters of the party. We are encouraging them to convince their family members to root for the party," Manish Yadav, state co-ordinator of the programme in Haryana, told ET. In Haryana, the party has shortlisted 14 out of 27 districts where there are migrants from Bihar. As per an estimate, there are about 500,000 Bihari residents in Haryana. The local BJP units are busy collecting and mapping data of Bihari migrants in 150 districts across states which is being fed on the BJP's internal 'Saral' app.

As per the BJP's estimate, there are about 20 million non-resident Biharis living in different states, about 65% of which are still registered in Bihar as voters. This roughly translates into 13 million voters staying outside Bihar, the majority of which reside in states such as Delhi, Maharashtra, Haryana, Telangana and Punjab. BJP is also looking at the data which was collected during the first wave of the Covid in 2020, said people in the know. The Bihar government had then announced that Rs 1,000 each would be transferred into the accounts of the migrant workers. About 1.3 million applications were received, they said. BJP experimented with an outreach to migrant voters at a smaller level during the Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections, according to the people. However, Bihar is the first state where the party aims to implement it at a large level, they said.