According to Shah, the party had put in place 161 call centres across India — a rough average of one every two Lok Sabha seats — which reached out to 24 crore and 81 lakh beneficiaries of Centre as well of state government schemes
New Delhi: Between them, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah covered nearly three lakh kilometres across the length and breadth of India while campaigning for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Outlining the humongous efforts of the party machinery this election season, Shah told media persons on Friday that in the “celebration of Indian democracy”, PM Modi did not leave a single corner of the country untouched.
“From March PM Modi started his campaign trail from Meerut and between March 28 and May, he conducted 142 rallies and four road shows. He covered 1.05 lakh kilometres, contacting 10,000 senior party activists during rallies and directly talking to over 7000 beneficiaries of BJP schemes,” Shah said.
The PM, going by “conservative estimates”, touched nearly 1.5 crore people of India during his campaigning.
“On three days, PM Modi covered 4000 plus kilometres while campaigning. The hottest was Itarsi at 46 degrees centigrade, the coldest was 18 degrees in Arunachal Pradesh, and the highest was at Rudrapur in Uttarakhand,” Shah said.
Shah himself covered 312 Lok Sabha constituencies with his 161 rallies and 18 road shows. “I covered 1.58 lakh kilometres of India; 1500 national-level leaders were employed in the campaigning while 3800 state-level leaders had been pressed into action,” the party chief added.
So far as chief ministers go, Yogi Adityanath remained the most used during campaigning, tailed by Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis and Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani.
According to Shah, the party had put in place 161 call centres across India — a rough average of one every two Lok Sabha seats — which reached out to 24 crore and 81 lakh beneficiaries of Centre as well of state government schemes. 15,682 volunteers who operated the centres did the job.
The duo thanked the nation and the media for bearing with the long election cycle at a press conference at the party headquarters in Delhi.
A seemingly relaxed PM Modi also reminisced his days when he used to sit with media persons in the party office and used to have tea. Jokingly he said he wished the party chief had not kept any more engagements for him after the presser, at which point Shah advised him that he had interaction with party workers.
The PM said the elections were fought on the last mile delivery of the NDA government.
“At 2566 Vidhan sabhas our full-timers were present. We ran the Vistarak Yojana, Shakti Sammelans and Mera Booth Sabse Mazboot programme in which the prime minister interacted with all booths of the country. We also did the Prabuddh Nagarik Sammelans in 472 Lok Sabha seats, Yuva Samelan in 480 seats, Mera Parivar Bhajpa Parivar put up banners and posters of the party, and we conducted Kamal Sandesh bike rallies in 3800 assembly constituencies,” Shah said.
“Under the Kamal Jyoti Sankalp programme, 22 crore beneficiaries of Central schemes lit lamps in their houses on the same day. Under ‘Bharat ke Mann ki Baat’ we made our manifesto by consulting people, apart from the ‘Main bhi chowkidar’ campaign that emerged from among people,” he added.
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