Starting with Eid, BJP to reach out to minorities with ‘Saugat-e-Modi’ kits

“In our country, we don’t greet people with gifts on festivals. The ‘Saugat-e-Modi’ kits will be a gift to people from the minority communities,” he said.

With the morcha having 32,000 office-bearers across the country, each one has been asked to reach out to 100 households, making the target an ambitious 32-lakh minority households.

The programme was formally launched in Delhi on Tuesday, a day after it was launched in Lucknow and three days after its launch in Mumbai.

The BJP has traditionally been weak among religious minorities, particularly Muslims, who have not been its enthusiastic supporters. In Sikh-majority Punjab, Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, and in Kerala, where there are significant Muslim and Christian populations, the BJP’s electoral performances have been below par.

In recent years, however, an outreach towards the religious minorities has been aimed at in a careful and calibrated manner, with the announcement of Veer Bal Diwas in the memory of the sons of Guru Gobind Singh on December 26, an outreach to Christian leaders in Kerala and inducting some of them in the BJP and NDA, and in reaching out to Muslims in segments — the Pasmandas and Sufis — rather than as a whole.