The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has put together a new 80-member internal working group to fine tune its strategy and messaging for Gen Z, people aware of developments said on Friday, adding that plans by the team were already incorporated in the party’s efforts to push back against ongoing street protests.
Also Read I Rajnath Singh attacks Congress over anti-CEC protests: ‘Conspiracy to grab power The team – guided by Union youth affairs minister Mansukh Mandaviya – is divided into six working groups and met thrice in the last few months to prepare an extensive report, which explores questions such as – Do the young connect to Hindutva? What kind of language should be used to communicate with them? Should the term Gen Z be used? One such instance was in deciding the party strategy on countering the Opposition protests.
The party’s youngest president, 45-year-old Nitin Nabin, presided over the first meeting and heard many suggestions, some of which have now been effected as part of the BJP strategy. The working group concluded that if the Opposition protest had 10,000 people showing up, the government’s protest must have a much bigger show of strength, say 50,000.
Gorakhpur MP Ravi Kishan , New Delhi MP Bansuri Swaraj, Bengaluru South MP Tejaswi Surya, Vadodara MP Hemang Joshi and Bharatiya Janata Party general secretary Smriti Irani are part of the team’s deliberations – called yuva samvad (youth dialogue), said the people cited above. The development was prompted by the party’s miscalculation of the scale and reach of the July student protests against examination paper leaks, which eventually forced the resignation of the then Union education minister, said the people cited above.
Opposition vs Centre devise strategy
This week, when Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and others were marching towards the Supreme Court, the BJP was organising protests in Gujarat, Assam and other parts of the country against Gandhi. They alleged that Gandhi was ignoring sexual harassment allegations against Congress MP Bimol Akoijam, who was removed as a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
