Text of the First Official Email sent through BJP's Email System by Shri Rajnath Singh Hon'ble President, Bharatiya Janata Party
on 5th April 2008

Dear Friends & Colleagues

Namaskar and Barsh Pratipada Ki Shubh Kamna!

It gives me immense pride to write the first official email of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s newly developed email system. Ten years ago, we became the first political party in India to have our own website. Today, we become the first political party to have our own email system.

In this day and time, an email system by itself may not have too much of a novelty or curiosity value. In fact it is a commonly accepted communication tool in the corporate sector, and is now beginning to be accepted in the social and government sectors too. But by introducing email system in the political sector—and following it up with other advanced tools like instant messaging, video conferencing, IP faxing, etc—I believe we are heralding a new era in the political sector in India.

Let me explain how. A year back I gave a new vision to the Party: BJP in Every Booth. The most obvious explanation of this vision statement is that the Party sangathan needs to spread to all corners of the country, and to the most grassroots level. But there is another important interpretation of the vision statement. And that is: while the message and thinking of the Party leadership needs to flow down to the booth level, and from there to each individual karyakarta; unbiased and unfiltered feedback from those working at the frontline also needs to flow up to the Party leadership. I expect modern communication tools to facilitate such a dialogue.

In this first phase of our email system launch, we are providing this facility to the top 300 leaders of the Party. The rollout plan is that in the next phase and within the next one month, we would provide this facility to 3000 (three thousand) karyakartas; in the next quarter to 30000 (thirty thousand); and in the next 6 months to 300000 (three lakhs).

In fact, email provisioning is part of a larger strategy I have of Automating the Party. My plan is to connect our offices and individual karyakartas through modern communication tools, and enable them to leverage the benefits of technology to do their work better. There are two parts to this strategy. The first is Party-to-Members (P2M), wherein all our offices would get connected through high-speed internet connections to the Central Office and other offices. The next is Party-to-Public (P2P), wherein we use technology to reach out to the public. Both parts of this strategy would run parallelly.

As a part of our Party-to-Members (P2M) plan, we would provide our karyakartas and office bearers with the following facilities: (a) Email, (b) Instant Messaging, (c) Fax over IP (Internet faxing), (d) Voice over IP (Internet telephony), (e) Video over IP (Video telephony), (f) Video Conferencing.

As a part of our Party-to-Public (P2P) plan, all our Pradeshes would be having their own websites, in both English as well the language(s) of that particular Pradesh.

All these initiatives would be carried out by the IT Cells at the Centre and the States. You would be aware that last July, for the first time in the history of the Party, we created a national IT Cell. Currently IT Cells have been created in 10 Pradeshes: Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chandigarh, Delhi, Goa, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.

I welcome you once again on this momentous occasion, and seek your help and cooperation towards building a 21st Century Party in a 21st Century India.

Sincerely yours

Rajnath Singh