PATNA: The Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee (BPCC) on Sunday conducted a day-long sensitisation workshop to apprise its leaders about modalities of the digital membership drive and stipulated the target of enlarging the party’s base of active members to at least 32 lakh by the end of next month.
This was announced by the All India Congress Committee (AICC)-appointed Pradesh returning officer (PRO) and Rajya Sabha member Ripun Bora at a meeting of senior party functionaries at the BPCC headquarter, Sadaquat Ashram, on Sunday.
The party’s decision to strengthen its presence across the state assumes considerable significance after the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) declared that it has no tie up with the Congress in the state. After nearly two decades of bonhomie, the two parties chose to part ways last year when they fought the by-elections for Kusheshwar Asthan and Tarapur assembly seats in October.
Congress legislature party (CLP) leader Ajit Sharma recently stated that the party would revive and strengthen its organisation at the grassroots level so that it would contest all future elections on its own. “We will use the challenge as opportunity to bring back the glorious old days of progress and prosperity to the state without classes of class, caste and religion,” said Sharma.
Elaborating the objective of the workshop, Bora said that the BPCC would appoint at least two enrollers, one male and another female, to carry out the digital memberships at all 60,000 polling booths. “We have undertaken this drive to regain people’s confidence and thereby rejuvenate the organisation with strong new faces across all constituencies of the state,” said Bora, adding that the campaign would go a long way in bolstering presence of the party cadres at the grassroots level.
The state Congress currently boasts of around 16 lack active members, as per the 2017 membership drive data. A senior leader of the BPCC said that digital membership is slightly technical and transparent exercise, which does not allow tampering of documents and credentials of the fresh inducts.
BPCC chief Madan Mohan Jha, CLP leader Sharma, chairman of the BPCC campaign committee Akhilesh Prasad Singh, MLC Prem Chandra Mishra, working presidents, MLAs and senior leaders of the party attended the workshop.
