Kolkata: Union home minister Amit Shah on Tuesday night held a strategy meet with key functionaries and fine-tuned the election blueprint to ensure a high turnout for the first polling day on Thursday. Shah tasked functionaries with ensuring that each polling station is manned until voting concludes.In a series of meetings that continued till 3am on Wednesday, Shah focused on 44,376 polling stations across 152 assembly constituencies. BJP has already categorised booths into three segments — strong, focused and weak. Focused booths are those where the party faced stiff competition in the last election.In BJP’s war room strategy this time, the role of the ‘panna pramukh’ — one who manages 30-60 voters — is crucial on polling day. Sunil Bansal, who will closely monitor each ‘panna pramukh’ on Thursday, is known for his micromanagement during the UP polls. Each ‘panna pramukh’, in touch with 10-15 families, will ensure that voters turn out. “Booth-level functionaries have been asked to go for man-to-man marking for the voters on Thursday,” a Bengal BJP neta said.The next key step is booth and ‘shakti kendra’ management. A ‘shakti kendra’, or a cluster of five to seven booths, has over the past two years been tasked with adding 15-20 voters per booth. Bhupendra Yadav, a key strategist for campaigns in states such as Rajasthan, Bihar and Odisha, will oversee polling station management on Thursday. Functionaries have been asked to immediately report any violence and seek assistance from central forces.
