BJP enlists 1 Cr members within 3 days

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has reached a membership figure of 1 crore through the digital route in a span of just 67 hours, besting the time taken to reach this number by any Indian or global company, including Reliance Jio and ChatGPT.

The only nearest competitor reaching the figure of 1 crore is OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which took 40 days; Jio achieved this number in 83 days, according to a post put out on X (formerly Twitter) by Amit Malviya, in-charge of BJP’s National Information & Technology Department.

“The BJP reaching 1 crore membership milestone, in less than 3 days, 67 hours to be precise, is a digital marvel. This gigantic figure for the BJP becomes all the more significant because people have verified themselves, while enlisting as members. The biggest digital brands, globally, have taken far more time to reach similar numbers,” Malviya said in the post.

The post also shows how various companies, including Swiggy, Zomato, Whatsapp and Telegram, have taken years to reach the subscriber figure of 1 crore.

The digital route taken by BJP to expand its membership includes a missed call platform and an app known as Saral.

Saral, which is available on both Google Play Store and Apple App Store, was designed to enlist members for the BJP. On Google Play Store, the app has seen more than 1 million downloads.

BJP has been quite adept at deploying technology and has been engaged in several channels. At YourStory’s TechSparks 2023 summit in New Delhi, Malviya highlighted the initiatives of the party.

In the run-up to the 2024 general elections, BJP reached out to potential members through a dial-up or missed call platform for the 60 lakh workers at the booth level. Besides, it also had facilities for AI calling, chatbots, and the Saral app.

“We have 30 TB of data, creating a data lake of sorts, and this has been collected over the last 10 elections. The number of attributes that we have collected and constantly keep mapping. These are beneficiaries of our government which is approximately 50 crore down to booth level with their address overall general profile. It is an ongoing activity,” said Malviya, talking about the depth of data collected by the app, which is available on the web, Android and iOS.