`ProNamo': BJP's silent army in Huzurabad
ProNamo has a strength of 800 to1000 volunteers who mostly interact online they said their members are also involved in many voluntary activities.
By Jinka Nagaraju Published on 30 Oct 2021 2:55 AM GMT
Huzurabad BJP's campaign has an invisible angle that the mainstream media had failed to notice. What went unnoticed in the by-election campaign is an amazing strategy of Sangh Parivar to help BJP candidate Eatela Rajender win the election.
Very few BJP leaders are aware that surreptitious armies of volunteers had been pressed into the party's service. One such army of volunteers is 'Professionals for Narendra Modi', ProNamo in short.
This is a group composed mainly of professionals- young and high-income techies, doctors, charted accountants, lawyers, etc from Hyderabad. They take commands from the RSS and work for the success of the BJP in elections. They are very committed to the BJP cause, more specifically in garnering support to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's programs.
Irrespective of the candidate they volunteer to campaign for BJP in the election. Curiously they hardly touch upon the core topic of Hindutva in the campaign.
Formed in 2019 after the Lok Sabha polls, the ProNamo has evolved into a big force. Though formed as Modi's fan club, it is now able to deploy its members in election campaigns also. They entered the Dubbaka by-election campaign for the first time in a big way.
They worked in the GHMC elections as well. But they could not concentrate on Nagarjuna Sagar's by-election due to Covid-19 restrictions. Now, ProNamo teams have now crisscrossed the Huzurabad constituency.
As many as 100 to 150 ProNamo members campaigned on weekends in Huzurabad on their own without coordinating with BJP.
They mostly campaigned on weekends. On every weekend about 40 to 50 professionals tour the villages in groups of twos or threes with their own expenditure. While most of them came from Hyderabad, others joined the campaign from neighboring towns as they are working from home.
"We conduct house to house campaign. We sit with the family members and educate them on the need to vote for BJP. We explain to them how the state government is diverting central funds to state programs and advertising the programs as its own. We show how the state ditched the youth, students, with examples. We also tell them the width and depth the corruption in the state spread. We also tell them we are not a party cadre. We tell them that we are well-educated, high salaried volunteers working on our own volition to strengthen the hands of Prime Minister Modi" said Sanjay, who refused to use his full name. Sanjay, a coordinator of the program, said they normally don't take any assistance from BJP.
"Our members make their own arrangements for food and shelter. We consult the local BJP leaders only when we are in remote areas, where food is not available. Otherwise, ours is a parallel campaign," he said.
According to Sanjay, a software professional from Hyderabad, the ProNamo teams have covered Huzurabad, Jammikunta, Kamalapur, Veenvanaka, Illendukunta, Uppl areas and might have met more than 10,000 voters.
Talking about the modus operandi of ProNamo, Chandrasekhar an advocate from Hyderabad said," Our campaign mostly conducted in person-to-person interaction. We never resort to political mud-slinging."
Chandrasekhar, who actively participated in the Dubbaka campaign could not go to Huzurabad due to other preoccupations but helped the team in coordination
He said ProNamo campaigned in Dubbaka for more than a month covering every polling booth area twice in half of the constituency.
"We did not take any local leader along with us. We explained to the voters that we are not paid workers. We are software and other professionals with huge salaries. People believed us as sincere. We spoke about local issues and broken promises such as double-bedroom houses, lack of recruitment for the government jobs, health problems of women-beedi workers, etc. We even explained to the voters about the sources of old age pension they are getting. We told them that 90 percent of the pension is covered by PM Modi's funds," he explained.
"When we told about the broken promises of TRS government, the people sounded convinced. We told the youth about the fate of the promised one lakh jobs in government and unemployed allowance, they agreed with us. Since the campaign run by the youth and non-politicians, it has gone down well with the local people," Sanjay and Chandra said.
ProNamo has a strength of 800 to1000 volunteers who mostly interact online they said their members are also involved in many voluntary activities.
