BJP follows a blueprint, Congress relies on Rahul : The Tribune India

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BJP follows a blueprint, Congress relies on Rahul

Shimla: Social media in Himachal Pradesh is furiously churning out slogans for or against the principal contenders, the Congress and BJP.

BJP follows a blueprint, Congress relies on Rahul

The posters of rival parties dot the highways across Himachal Pradesh. Photos: Amit Kanwar



Pratibha Chauhan

Shimla: Social media in Himachal Pradesh is furiously churning out slogans for or against the principal contenders, the Congress and BJP. All this is in addition to dozens of rallies and door-to-door campaigning. Election wizards managing the BJP War Room under the hawk eye of Amit Shah are not leaving any medium to get across to the voters. Shah has already addressed four big party rallies and workers’ meetings over the last one year. The party’s election managers seem to follow a blueprint for the campaign. The instructions are clear: follow the points in a precision manner.

The voting for the 68-member Assembly is due on November 9. The BJP’s campaign is being run through remote by the central leadership. For Congress, there is complete complacency. Some of the Congress leaders — GS Bali and Mukesh Agnihotri and MLAs such as Ajay Mahajan — keep in touch with the voters through Facebook. BJP MLA from Nahan Rajiv Bindal has launched his website to keep in touch with voters and keep them posted about his programmes and development works undertaken by him. Union Health Minister JP Nadda’s presence on Facebook and Twitter is also very noticeable.

However it is youngsters such as Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur, State Youth Congress chief Vikramaditya Singh and IT Advisor to the CM Gokul Butail who have taken the lead in making effective use of technology to reach out. “I have been using Facebook since I joined the Youth Congress. I find it extremely convenient in contacting people and getting their feedback. Party workers, too, get the message quickly as they don’t have to travel all the way to Shimla,” says Vikramaditya. 

In a sharp contrast, the ruling Congress is yet to gear up its campaign. Sharp differences between Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and state party chief Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu seem to be impacting the morale of the party cadres. They hope Rahul Gandhi will be able to iron out differences. 

The BJP’s Campaign Room is buzzing with activity 24X7. The head of the BJP’s State IT Cell Ravi Rai Rana has an arduous task at hand. Having direct contact with each of the party workers at the block level, the war room has statistics of the target for each rally, the actual attendance and the participation from each assembly segment with complete details of its unit right at the booth level. 

“The campaign room has the number of the vehicles, driver’s phone number and the number of persons who travelled in it so as to get exact figures of the attendance at our rallies,” says Satti. He says based on these estimates, the attendance at Modi’s Bilaspur rally was over 70,000 at the venue with 15,000 spilling out on the roads and area around the ground.

Even as the BJP is rearing to wrest power from the Congress, interestingly its leaders and MLAs seem overburdened and virtually exhausted with one year of hectic campaigning. The party has launched several programmes like Tridev Sammelans at the parliamentary level, Hisaab Mange Himachal and Hunkar Rally. “So many of these programmes have not given us much time for personal contact with the voters, which in Himachal, is very essential,” says a BJP MLA.

“You can’t discount the significance of traditional ways of campaigning,” says Satti. So, the BJP is not slackening on street corner meetings. Ditto for the Congress. “The importance of social media is essential in disseminating information about welfare steps being taken by the state government,” says Sukhu. He says various cells of the party are very active on social media. “This way, people living in even remote areas of the state are able to know what the government has done for them.” 

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