Gandhinagar: In the book Modi@20: Dreams Meet Delivery (BlueKraft Digital), that was launched last week, Union Home and Corporate affairs minister Amit Shah mentions how Narendrabhai Modi, who was general secretary (organization) of party’s Gujarat unit in 1980s and 1990s expanded the party and at the same time ensured electoral competitiveness with his master-strategies.

Shah in this book says – after having launched in 1988 a Sanghathan Parva, for the BJP, with proper registers of enrolments, he undertook two long tours of the State accompanying Narendrabhai Modi.

“One piece of advice particularly stayed with me. Narendra Bhai told us every village was likely to have had two major candidates in the preceding sarpanch election. The winner would invariably be from the Congress or the Janata Dal, the two leading parties in Gujarat at the time. The loser would be sidelined and forgotten. Modi asked us to target the runner-up as part of the party membership drive,” Shah writes.

“The rationale was laser sharp. The loser in the sarpanch contest, he said, would have 30-40 per cent of the vote. This was not enough to win, but still estimable. Modi asked us to approach all such persons and invite them into the BJP with dignity and after an honest conversation about our party’s position and philosophies. If the match worked, it added a sizeable number of voters, at the village level to our existing core. It also gave us a notable micro-level leader of some influence,” he adds. DeshGujarat