Dehradun: Even though the next Uttarakhand assembly polls are still some distance away, the BJP has begun fine-tuning its electoral machinery with a sharp focus on nearly 3,000 polling booths where it failed to secure a lead in the 2022 assembly election. BJP won 47 seats in the last state polls, while Congress secured 19.Party leaders say the strategy is part of a larger effort to strengthen BJP’s organisational network at the grassroots level and plug gaps in areas where it underperformed despite being in power in the state since 2017.Senior BJP member Jyoti Prasad Gairola said the party is carrying out a booth-wise assessment across the state and devising customised plans for “each of the identified around 3,000 booths”.Uttarakhand currently has 11,729 polling booths, a number that is expected to increase by around 800 after the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is completed, he added.Unlike conventional election planning, the BJP is relying on micro-level analysis, arguing that every booth presents a unique electoral challenge.“Every booth that the party lost in the last election has a different nature. Some are located in the hills while others are in the plains. Their demographic profiles are different. The number of women voters, ex-servicemen, minorities, youth and migrant families varies from booth to booth. A uniform strategy cannot work everywhere,” Gairola told TOI.The approach reflects the BJP’s long-standing emphasis on booth management, often described within the party as the foundation of electoral success. Senior members believe that even marginal gains at the booth level can significantly influence outcomes in tight contests.Another key element of the BJP’s strategy is its focus on weakening opposition parties at the grassroots level rather than concentrating solely on their prominent leaders. State BJP president Mahendra Bhatt has already indicated that “the party intends to focus on opposition workers operating at the booth level”. The objective, leaders say, is to erode the organisational strength that enables rival parties to mobilise voters during polls.“Rather than focusing only on the big faces of opposition parties, we are concentrating on the workers who carry their party flags at the booth level. We are going to carry out a dedicated membership campaign targeted at those dedicated booth level workers of opposition parties who are in sync with BJP’s ideology,” said Manveer Singh Chauhan, Uttarakhand BJP’s state media in-charge.