No chartered planes for campaign, Cong says BJP ‘booked all’

Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, January 22

With the code for the next Lok Sabha polls expected to be enforced anytime soon, the Opposition Congress is learnt to be already feeling bogged down by what it describes as a “battle of unequals” against the BJP when it comes to financial resources.

So much so that the principal Opposition party is finding it tough to even reserve chartered planes for its campaign. “We are struggling to book planes as the BJP has reserved them all,” says senior Congress leader Anand Sharma, party’s communications committee in-charge for the General Election. 

The BJP has more moneybags and resources compared to the Congress, he says, recalling the 2014 poll which the Congress believes it lost mainly because the BJP “captured the narrative by spending generously on (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi’s campaign”. This time, the Congress says, it will use both conventional and new media to drive its message home on PM Modi’s “unfulfilled promises”. The party aims to launch its campaign around February 20.

Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, meanwhile, today indicated in his tweet what his principal charge against PM Modi, going into poll season, will be. “Modi Bachao, Advertisement Chalao (sic),” Gandhi tweeted, a few days after the Congress used advertising data from Broadcast Audience Research Council to say the BJP was the top advertiser on TV in the week ending November 16 last year ahead of five-state polls.  The BJP dislodged Vimal pan masala from the number one advertiser slot and was followed by Netflix and Trivago in terms of ad spends.