In Karnal, Manohar Lal Khattar's commanders hold the fort

Karnal: The main face of BJP’s campaign for the Haryana assembly elections, chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, has been touring the entire state to campaign for party candidates. Given his schedule, the CM has not been able to devote as much time to campaig on his own assembly seat, Karnal, and this is where support from within the saffron party is helping him.

A core committee, a few sub-commitees, 100 active members and 5,000 panna pramukhs (page in-charges) are holding the fort for Khattar in his absence from Karnal and have been working out of a war room in Aggarwal Bhawan on Railway Road here.

To make voters choose Khattar for being the chief minister, the team has even come up with punchline for its poll campaign — ‘Mai Bhi Manohar Lal’. It is also asking people to vote for him by pushing the tag of Karnal being “the CM’s city”.

Khattar is seeking a re-election from Karnal. He is among 12 candidates who are in the fray. As he is busy most of the day, Khattar discusses the Karnal campaign with his committee members at midnight or in the wee hours.

BJP Karnal district president Jagmohan Anand is heading Khattar’s team. He has teamed up with Sanjay Tandon, a senior BJP leader from Chandigarh, who has been made in charge of all the four constituencies falling under Karnal district.

In Khattar’s war room, the day starts at 6am, when all teams and campaign parties assemble. The hall of Aggarwal Bhawan has been divided into various segments. Krishan Garg, the former senior deputy mayor of Karnal, looks after the overall administrative affairs of the set-up.

Anand looks after supervises media, social media and campaigning teams. A separate section for voter facilitators has been set up. Parvesh Sharma manages the accounts and it is learnt that he is the only one who operates Khattar’s bank accounts for making day-to-day payments.

The core team includes Jagmohan Anand, mayor Renu Gupta, ex-district president Ashok Sukhija, Haryana Women BJP Mahila Morcha leader Nirmala Rani and Jang Bahadur Chauhan, the assembly in charge of BJP in Karnal. Khattar’s former OSD, Amrender Singh, is the sixth member of the team.

Based on inputs received through the day, the core team draws an adavance action plan. It meets at 11pm to finalise strategy for the next day. All members take inputs from their field teams. “Our day ends after CM sahib takes the feedback. It could be anytime after 11pm. He calls and takes the report of not just Karnal, but all constituencies. Despite being so occupied, he knows all workers and there have been incidents where he lauds the role of some of them,” says Anand.

Anand adds that each member of the core team attends public meetings to represent “Bau ji”. “Sometimes, people ask for him, but we manage to convince them. Now, we are hoping him to be here with us on the 19th, when campaigning comes to end,” he adds.