19 hours ago
Mahayuti rolls out voter connect drive ahead of local polls
Nagpur: Seeking to regain ground ahead of the crucial local body elections, the Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP govt has rolled out an ambitious outreach drive titled 'Sarkar Aplya Dari' (Government at Your Doorstep).
This initiative will see all ministers from the ruling Mahayuti alliance fan out across Maharashtra's 36 districts to directly hear and address public grievances.
Labour minister Aakash Fundkar kicked off the campaign in Nagpur on Monday with a closed-door meeting at the BJP's Ganeshpeth office, where he interacted with city and district-level party workers. The focus was on fine-tuning the mechanism to collect civic complaints and speed up their redressal through local coordination with officials.
The drive aims to shift the power dynamic from Mantralaya to the grassroots, according to spokesperson Chandan Goswami.
"Under Sarkar Aplya Dari, people no longer need to travel to Mumbai to get their issues addressed," Fundkar told party leaders. "We're bringing the govt directly to every district. Ministers and officers will be accessible on the ground, and our party workers will be the crucial link in identifying and resolving local concerns."
While the BJP has packaged the initiative as a governance reform, party sources acknowledge it is also a calibrated political strategy to blunt anti-incumbency narratives ahead of the polls. With the Opposition targeting the ruling alliance on issues of public discontent, the Mahayuti appears to be pivoting towards course correction and organisational reboot.
BJP city president Daya Shankar Tiwari, in his remarks, invoked the people-centric legacy of late minister Bhau Saheb Fundkar to underline the moral compass of the outreach.
District president Manohar Kumbhare pressed for quicker administrative responses from the state secretariat, suggesting that bureaucracy needed to match the political intent of the programme.
The campaign is expected to gather momentum in the coming weeks, with ministers tasked with compiling on-ground reports and feeding them into a centralised grievance redressal mechanism. Whether this outreach translates into electoral dividends remains to be seen, but the BJP appears intent on regaining narrative control.
Senior leaders including MLA Krishna Khopde, district chief Anandrao Raut, and ex-MLAs Vikas Kumbhare and Raju Potdar shared the stage, signalling the party's attempt to present a united front. The event also saw the presence of newly appointed and former mandal heads, as well as key local leaders such as Sudhir Deulgaonkar, Guddu Trivedi, Ram Abulkar, Balya Borkar, Vishnu Changde, Ashwini Jichkar, Shivani Dani, Chetan Kayarkar, Pragati Patil, and Bhojraj Dumbe.
