Lucknow: With the UP Assembly elections less than a year away, political parties have started building up the groundswell through intensified grassroots spadework.The BJP has initiated the nine-day Gaon Chalo Abhiyan, in which the party functionaries have been assigned the task of highlighting the achievements and welfare delivery done by the Narendra Modi govt at the Centre and the Yogi Adityanath govt in UP at the booth level.The campaign, timed around the birth anniversary celebration of Dalit icon BR Ambedkar on April 14, will also see the BJP connecting with the SC communities, which account for 21% of the voting bloc in the state.“The idea of the campaign is to mobilise the masses and deepen connection with the beneficiaries of the various welfare schemes,” said UP BJP spokesperson Hero Bajpai. He said that party functionaries are being deployed across villages to reinforce organisational cohesion.The Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party too has intensified its ground-level connect by identifying people having ideological connect with the party. Sources said that the party stepped up booth-level measures on the sidelines of the Special Intensive Revision exercise.SP spokesperson Uday Bir Singh said that besides appointing Booth Level Agents, the party was engaging with the people at the grassroots to highlight the Pichhda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak framework, which signals an attempt to rebuild a broad social coalition to counter BJP’s cross-caste outreach.Sources said that the SP has also identified around 250 social media influencers who can potentially connect with the local populace in different languages. The move reflects an evolution in campaign strategy — blending traditional caste arithmetic with digital micro-targeting.Likewise, SP’s ally the Congress too launched a 100-day outreach campaign aimed at strengthening the party’s grassroots presence earlier this year. Under this, the party planned to organise more than 30 ‘Samvidhan Samvaad’ rallies to highlight issues of constitutional importance. Sources said that by foregrounding constitutional values and governance issues, the grand old party aimed to carve out an ideological niche rather than compete directly on organisational strength.The Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party is also engaged in a grassroots mobilisation campaign to revive its fortunes ahead of the 2027 Assembly elections. The campaign, sources said, focuses on reviving the party’s ideological base while restructuring local units.Sources said that Mayawati has been conducting intensive review meetings to strengthen the party.The party, sources said, was actively holding village-level meetings and nukkad sabhas to connect and regain its core Dalit vote while expanding to include Most Backward Castes and Muslims.Analysts said that the decentralised model of working at the booth level allowed the political parties to penetrate deep into rural areas, where electoral preferences are often shaped by local dynamics and direct engagement rather than macro narratives.Analysts said that the decentralised model of working at the booth level allowed the political parties to penetrate deep into rural areas, where electoral preferences are often shaped by local dynamics and direct engagement rather than macro narratives. .
