Smriti Irani to lead PM Modi's insurance scheme drive ahead of Raksha Bandhan

NEW DELHI: Banks across the country are set to receive a helping hand from BJP cadres as the ruling party has decided to launch a massive campaign to widen the coverage of the ambitious insurance schemes Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana and Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana in the run-up to Raksha Bandhan festival.

The party has constituted a high-level team spearheaded by Union human resource development minister Smriti Irani to galvanise party cadres to launch a "mass movement" ahead of the festival next month to enroll female members under the schemes launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The team constituted by the BJP last week includes Union ministers Thaawar Chand Gahlot, Harsh Vardhan and Jitendra Singh, along with party general secretary Anil Jain, the chief of the party’s women’s wing Vijaya Rahatkar, and party secretaries Sudha Yadav and Jyoti Dhurve to monitor the campaign at the national level.

Under the programme, the BJP has tasked its workers with enrolling 11,000 women in each assembly constituency across to country under the insurance schemes launched early this year.

This central team will visit states in the first week of August to ensure party’s state units have chalked out programmes to observe Raksha Bandhan as a social security festival for women in their respective states, BJP members said.