With the Opposition stepping up its campaign on governance issues, the ruling BJP has finalised a Gen-Z strategy that will involve what leaders describe as “acquainting the youth with the ills of governance in the pre-Modi era”.A similar plan will unfold in states, especially poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, where BJP leaders have been told to speak about the issues that plagued the state before Yogi Adityanath took charge.The plan was finalised at a social media workshop, which BJP chief Nitin Nabin chaired at the BJP headquarters on Jattvibeday. The meeting was attended by BL Santhosh, BJP’s national general secretary (Organisation).The significance of the strategy lies less in another social-media campaign and more in BJP’s attempt to shape the political reference point of first-time voters, many of whom have little or no personal memory of governments before 2014 at the Centre and 2017 in Uttar Pradesh.A senior BJYM functionary from Uttar Pradesh told The Tribune that, since the announcement of the new organisational leadership, greater emphasis has been placed on reaching Gen-Z voters and explaining to them how governance had functioned before 2014 at the Centre and before BJP came to power in UP. The instruction, the functionary said, is to use “true evidence” while making the comparison.The strategy puts a premium on proof rather than political slogans, with party workers being asked to establish their arguments through government records, data and examples of schemes and infrastructure.The timing is significant. BJP is already preparing its campaign around the Yogi government’s record, with law and order and women’s safety among the themes being highlighted for the 2027 Assembly election. Nabin began organisational outreach in western Uttar Pradesh today, Monday, while Santhosh’s visit to Kanpur on September 13-14 has given the central leadership fresh organisational inputs on the state.BJP MP Ramesh Awasthi told The Tribune that Santhosh had asked workers to reach out to Gen-Z, understand what young voters want and communicate the government’s work. He said the strategy would also seek to present BJP’s assessment of Yogi Adityanath’s governance vis-à-vis the Akhilesh Yadav period to younger voters.The approach comes as political parties increasingly compete for young voters through digital platforms. The Samajwadi Party has separately begun a Gen-Z outreach programme in UP, focusing on issues including reservation and rising education fees.The strategy also follows the Delhi University Students’ Union results, where ABVP won three of the four central-panel posts. However, an independent candidate, former NSUI member Deepanshu Shokeen, won the vice-president’s post, underlining that the student vote cannot simply be equated with organisational support for one political formation.For BJP, the immediate challenge is therefore not merely increasing its digital reach. It is converting reach into sustained engagement with a generation whose political memories are being formed largely through phones, short-form video and social platforms.That makes the workshop a potentially important marker of BJP’s next electoral communication phase — not just telling Gen-Z what the government has done, but attempting to define the period against which that performance should be judged.