Telangana: BJP Street Corner meetings get poor response

The party was supposed to organise 11,000 street corner meetings between February 10 and 25, however, it managed to conduct just above 6,000 meetings

Hyderabad: The State BJP leadership is highly disappointed as the much publicised street corner meetings across the State have not generated the desired results and impact.

The party was supposed to organise 11,000 street corner meetings between February 10 and 25, however, it managed to conduct just above 6,000 meetings.

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To hide its failure Telangana BJP affairs in-charges Tarun Chugh extended the street corner meetings till February 28 so that it could achieve at least 70 percent of the target, but still it could not reach the target. In fact, in the first 10 days the party managed to hold just 3,000 street corner meetings across the State.

State coordinator for the campaign K Venkateswarlu made tall claims about the street corner meetings and response from the people of the State, but once it began, the lack of coordination among various leaders was exposed. The lack of coordination among leaders was being cited as the main reason for the failure of the party to achieve the 11,000 target.

Except party State president Bandi Sanjay and union Tourism Minister G Kishan Reddy’s meeting there was very poor response from people to the street corner meetings.

The BJP leaders claimed that since the Mahabubnagar-Rangareddy-Hyderabad Teacher’s constituency election model code of conduct has come into force, the party was facing difficulty in getting permission for holding street corner meetings.

They further claimed that the street-corner meetings could not be held in a full-fledged manner due to Shivaratri festival and Chatrapati Sivaji Maharaj jayanthi.

Interestingly, despite poor response to the street corner meeting, the party believes that the meetings have served their purpose by helping the party make its presence felt across the State and dispel the perception that it had no presence in some of the districts.

Following failure to meet the target, Tarun Chugh is said to have asked the in-charges of all the 119 Assembly constituencies to organise huge public meetings in all constituencies on February 28.

The street corner meetings were held as part of the mass outreach programme ‘Praja Gosa, BJP Bharosa’ and aimed to strengthen the party at the grass-roots and also target the BRS government for its alleged failures.