In the last leg of the ongoing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) membership drive, party leaders are still engaging in unethical practices to achieve targets. The final phase of the Sangathan Parv concludes on October 15. In Tikamgarh, party leaders were found enticing prospective saffron party members with T-shirts. A video of this unethical practice went viral on the internet on Sunday. In the video, a former representative of a prominent Union Minister was seen enrolling party members by luring them with T-shirts. The former representative of the Union Minister, Ginni Yadav, along with a state government employee, Vijay Yadav, was seen distributing T-shirts to residents in the village of Mawai to motivate them to join the party. This 43-second video depicts the ingenious methods employed by associates of Union Minister Virendra Khatik to fulfill the targets assigned to them. In a similar incident reported from Sagar, local BJP leaders were seen enrolling members at a middle school in the area. They stopped academic activities and gave bhashans, motivating teachers and staff members to become members of the ruling party. In Shahgarh block of Banda assembly in Sagar district, the BJP organized a membership drive program at a school. A large number of BJP workers were present as the leaders lectured on the benefits of joining the party. Surprisingly, BJP Membership Campaign was clearly written on the blackboard behind those seeking to enroll members for the ruling party. It is not immediately clear if the school principal had approved of the activity. Taking a strict view of the incident, former Congress MLA Tarbar Singh Lodhi condemned the actions and said that he would launch a fierce agitation if the District Education Officer and Sagar Collector fail to act on his complaints. In several districts of Madhya Pradesh, party leaders are facing problems in enrolling new members. Speaking off the record, they say that people have lost interest in the long-drawn membership drive and also cite lengthy forms and internet issues among the challenges they are facing. Amid an all-out race for numbers, BJP sources said that Tribal Affairs Minister Vijay Shah was lagging behind with only 19 percent conversions on his assigned targets. The situation persists across tribal-dominated assemblies, where the overall conversion continues to remain in the region of 32 percent. < BJP State Spokesperson Rajneesh Agrawat said that after the second phase of the membership drive, it would be further decided whether the drive would continue. Regarding reports of controversies surrounding the drive, Agarwal claimed that lakhs of people have already joined the party, proving such allegations to be baseless.

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