Gandhinagar,  The BJP has set a target of winning 152 seats in upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections and for this the party is conducting internal surveys and taking direct feedback from the people.

The party says this helps the leadership gauge the mood, and ground situation at the grassroots level and also of the performance of sitting MLAs or Lok Sabha members or even aspiring candidates of the last elections.

"Party does conduct internal surveys, sometimes through senior leaders, and now a days even professional agencies are hired for the purpose. The target is to get right feedback from workers and citizens as to what they feel about government's developmental agenda, policies and schemes. Elected representatives' performance are also taken into account in the survey," said Keshubhai Nakrani, BJP MLA from Gariyadhar constituency.

"If such surveys, whether internally or externally conducted, the outcome is only shared with the state leadership. District or city organization office bearers are not kept in loop or informed about it," said Marutisinh Atodariya, Bharuch District Committee president.

Confirming the internal feedback system, BJP media coordinator Yagnesh Dave said, "RSS sah-pracharaks, party vistaraks travel in their respective areas and speak to party workers, to people from various sections, and try to know what people think about the government's image and programme delivery."

When performance of sitting MLA is assessed, vistaraks not only inquire about them but even about leaders who were on the candidate's panel last time. "This gives a better idea about how hard everyone is working to spread party messages, its ideology and to address pending issues," said Dave.

Party sources said that the report of the surveys are used to prepare a blueprint for social engineering and seat wise strategy, wherever it is found that party is weak on a specific seat. Then a senior party leader or a minister is deputed as incharge or observer of the constituency to ensure that party wins the seat.

He further said, wherever a party gets good response about government programmes and its core ideology on voters on such seats, the party does take risk in experimentation. If it works, it can be replicated on more such seats next time.

The BJP this time wants to break the record of 1985 assembly elections in which Congress won 149 seats.