Soon after the BJP Parliamentary Party meeting on Tuesday, Union Skill Development Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy rushed to Lucknow. His objective: to oversee the successful conduct of the BJP government’s biggest job placement drive in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh.

The “Rozgar Mela” in Lucknow is the first in a series of 19 such mega job fests to be held over the next two months, when UP will be in the midst of hectic electioneering.

“Basically, we are facilitating jobs for youngsters. They may or may not be part of our training processes under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna (PMKVY). The National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) has tied up with industry bodies to invite companies in search of human resources and got them together with young people aspiring for jobs. We started in Varanasi on a small scale but it turned out to be such a success that the Prime Minister encouraged us to organise more such events,” Rudy told BusinessLine .

Although the Minister was quick to point out that this is “work in progress” for the entire country, the focus clearly is on UP with job fests being planned from Mirzapur, Lucknow, Varanasi, Azamgarh, Basti, Gonda and Amethi in eastern UP and Awadh region to Bareilly, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Noida in western UP.

Union Ministers have been lined up to distribute job certificates to aspiring youth. All 19 job fests are scheduled in December and January, when campaigning will pick up in UP.

Textiles Minister Smriti Irani is expected to attend a job fair in Amethi, from where she contested against Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi in the Lok Sabha polls.

And while Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be in Agra for a similar function, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan will visit Ghaziabad, Education Minister Prakash Javdekar Saharanpur and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Moradabad for the job fest. Other ministers involved in the drive are Manoj Sinha, Radha Mohan Singh, Thawar Chand Gehlot, M Venkaiah Naidu and JP Nadda among others.

The efforts are part of the BJP’s initiative to supply political thrust to the Centre’s welfare schemes so that direct benefits are not just delivered, they are also seen to be delivered. So, not only are the ministers being asked to attend these job fests, local MPs and senior party functionaries have been asked to join in.

At the Lucknow Rozgar Mela for instance, a prominent attendee at the job fest was a party MLC and a National Secretary in the BJP. The local MP and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh is away in Havana, but his absence was duly explained to the crowd by Rudy.

By all accounts, the scheme will earn goodwill for the BJP in the coming months.

Almost 10,000 youth attended the fair on Monday and Tuesday, and about 3,340 youngsters were shortlisted by companies in agriculture, automotive, beauty and wellness, construction, electronics, healthcare and other sectors. The job offer letters were distributed by Rudy at the site. “You can derive political meaning in what we are doing, but this is work in progress for us. We will be conducting similar exercises across the country,” the Minister said.

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