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Trinamul starts booth-level drive using colour codes

Voters whose choice is not clear to the ruling party are marked in orange, while those who are expected to cast their votes against it have been 'painted' red

Subhasish Chaudhuri Calcutta Published 04.03.21, 02:25 AM
Trinamul MP Mahua Moitra, who devised the colour-coding system, in Nadia

Trinamul MP Mahua Moitra, who devised the colour-coding system, in Nadia

The Trinamul Congress leadership in Nadia has started a booth-level drive using colour codes for voter preferences to get an estimate of the party’s strength and finalise its campaign strategy in the run-up to the Assembly polls.

Trinamul’s Nadia district unit chief and Krishnagar MP Mahua Moitra, the brain behind this initiative, has asked all booth-level committees to scrutinise the voter list and identify the voting preference of each person with green, orange and red colours.

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Accordingly to Moitra’s strategy, party workers have begun marking out committed Trinamul voters on the list with the colour green.

Voters whose choice is not clear to the ruling party are marked in orange, while those who are expected to cast their votes against Trinamul have been “painted” red.

After taking charge of the party organisation in Nadia, Moitra formed booth-level committees and asked workers to begin this colour-coded scrutiny meticulously.

“This is a reality check,” Moitra, one of the most talked-about parliamentarians in the Opposition for her impassioned and informed speeches, told The Telegraph.

“This is basically an endeavour being taken at every booth to know who are our voters, who are not and who are in the middle. Accordingly, our objective is to work on those who are not our committed voters, so that they can be brought in our favour,” Moitra added.

Moitra has told the workers to be careful as she would compare their booth-level report with actual booth-wise results after the elections.

“It has been introduced as a reality check in the true sense. Sometimes party leaders at the grassroots level claim to ensure a lead by a big margin, but eventually results reveal a different story. So, I have told booth-level workers to be careful while scrutinising voters,” Moitra said.

Party insiders said Moitra had introduced the method during the 2019 Lok Sabha election, but the effort was not successful because some grassroots leaders apparently did not cooperate.

Leaders close to Moitra claimed that in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Trinamul had lost in 14 Assembly segments out of 17 in Nadia only owing to poor ground-level scrutiny despite her repeated appeals.

But Moitra introduced mandatory booth-level voter list scrutiny after taking responsibility of the organisation during December last year.

“In December last year, Mahuadi launched direct interaction with the party workers at 4,582 booths in the district when she directed us to begin the scrutiny of voters using colour codes in an organised manner for the first time. Now our main objective is to continue pursuing the orange voters (fence-sitters) as advised by her so as to ensure a win,” said a booth committee member in Ranaghat.

Moitra added: “I have told booth-level workers to meticulously know their voters well. Sometimes party workers spend time on negative voters by visiting them repeatedly. BJP workers also do not spend time unnecessarily by trying to woo Muslim voters repeatedly...”

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