mdn exclusive: To conquer Delhi, Narendra Modi plans to show off Gujarat civic bodies' success

The Bharatiya Janata Party is hoping that keeping its ear to the ground could well be the road that takes it to Delhi’s power centre.

The party’s election campaign committee head and Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s strategy involves getting the basics right. The BJP feels that improving civic services at local level will help the party strengthen its support base in urban pockets. Modi’s plan is to promote Gujarat’s municipal bodies as ‘model’ agencies for BJP-ruled local bodies (municipal corporation, municipal council, zilla or nagar panchayat) across the country.

These civic bodies will be asked to follow best practices in sanitation services, solid-waste management, recycling waste and generating energy from waste. The idea is a part of micro-management of the 2014 general elections campaign.

A senior BJP leader said that after the party’s national executive meet in Goa, where Modi was named the election campaign committee head, party president Rajnath Singh asked general secretary (organisation) Ramlal to compile a national database of elected local body members who will be explained how to use the civic body platform to promote good governance, that are being practised in Gujarat under Modi.

“The civic bodies of Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot provide the best examples of good governance. Other BJP-led corporations can learn from their best practices,” said Vijender Gupta, national convener of BJP’s local bodies’ cell. “We will help other local bodies adopt the good governance model of municipalities, especially from Gujarat.”

Gupta wrote to all the BJP state unit presidents asking them for details of all the party’s elected members in all the state’s local civic bodies. He has also asked them to appoint an office-bearers of the level of state general-secretary to co-ordinate with the national cell.

In states like Bihar, where local body elections are held in a non-partisan manner, the state unit president has been asked to file details of all elected members as well as provide details of office bearers of the party’s local body cell in the state’s districts.

The party has calculated that there are 4,000 local bodies functioning out of 7,000 urban pockets, with a population of about 37 crore. “This means 75,000 corporators are elected in these 4,000 local bodies. Adopting best practices will bring uniformity in civic infrastructure,” said Gupta.