While the Congress is making photographs compulsory in their membership form, the BJP, which concluded its membership campaign on September 25, is still relying on the old method of making entries with details in registers to avoid bogus membership.

Since October first week, the party has sent out teams in different districts to cross-check the membership. In order to increase the communication with the members, the party, for the first time, has decided to call their members randomly and ask them to speak about party issues.

“We haven’t introduced the system of photographs as yet, but since our membership verification forms are quite exhaustive, we are expecting that it will be able to curb bogus membership to a large extent,” said Mahendra Singh, BJP general secretary and in-charge of the party’s membership campaign.

Having enrolled around 2.5 lakh members on paper, with verification drive on to check the actual numbers, the party is quite hopeful of getting a good support.

The verification form is quite exhaustive, involving basic details like name, father’s name, address and area, educational qualification, booth number, slip number in the voter’s list.  

“You can fake details like name and address, but what about the booth number and the voter’s list number? It is not easy to create fake slip numbers as we are verifying them with the voter’s lists ourselves,” said Singh.

During this year’s membership campaign, the party is also including telephone numbers of the members. “During verifications, our team members randomly call a member and ask them to attend party meetings and elections,” said Singh.

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