Members of the Rashtra Sevika Samiti — the women’s volunteer corps that parallels the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) — and the Vishva Hindu Parishad’s women’s wing Durga Vahini (DV) are among those involved in door-to-door campaigning for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Delhi election.
The two organisations have been asked to focus on women and youth voters as the party is projecting Kiran Bedi as its Chief Ministerial candidate.
A source in the RSS Delhi unit told The Hindu that it has mobilised “nearly one lakh volunteers of the Sangh and affiliated organisations to motivate people to vote for the BJP.” VHP spokesperson Vinod Bansal said the Parishad and its volunteers, including those from DV, have been “inspiring people to vote for nationalist forces.”
“Kiran Bedi is an honest woman and the prospect of having her as Chief Minister has enthused the cadres,” he said, but refused to share details of the mobilisation.
With the BJP Delhi unit bogged down by infighting, it had to turn to the RSS for help, a party vice-president said. “The state of the party organisation is not as robust as we would have liked. These are short-term measures we have had to take,” he added. The RSS’s involvement in the campaign is expected to circumvent the infighting in the BJP.
The RSS, meanwhile, has activated all 151 units in Delhi. “Our structure is spread till the level of the basti [slum] and we are galvanising all our cadres wherever the BJP needs us,” an official said.
The Rashtra Sevika Samiti has been active in the Delhi election for the last one week, organising public meetings and door-to-door campaigning. It has divided the work among its six zones in Delhi and its activities range from reaching out to college students to organising bhajan mandlis in the neighbourhoods. “From the time Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister, he has been delivering on what he promised,” a senior RSS leader from the unit coordinating with the BJP for the campaign said. “India’s might is being recognised the world over. There is no other PM who got an American President to sit and watch the Republic Day parade for two-and-a-half hours. We now want Delhi to get its due.”
