BJP arms itself with bytes & pixels for polls

With UP elections round the corner, the BJP is preparing to build a groundswell on the lines of the Donald Trump campaign.
BJP arms itself with bytes & pixels for polls

LUCKNOW: With UP elections round the corner, the BJP is preparing to build a groundswell on the lines of the Donald Trump campaign besides replicating the successful 2014 Narendra Modi digital blitz. The party has already taken its IT-backed campaign to the next level, all planned and managed through its nerve centre at the state headquarters.

From interacting with partymen in more than 1.4 lakh party booths daily to tracking 403 video vans in each constituency,  from monitoring media reports about BJP across the state to taking regular feedbacks from Atal Call centres in each district, the party’s 110-seater war-room, with a team of 80-90 people, is working overtime these days.

“Once the names of candidates are announced, we will start holding workers’ conference in each constituency to build up the mood. It will be done on the basis of feedbacks we have collected through our vast network to understand local issues and reach up to the last voter. Thereafter, there will be a customised campaign for each constituency,” says JPS Rathore, an M-Tech from IIT-BHU, who is the head of campaign management committee.

Apart from the war-room and the 25-seater IT centre at the BJ

P headquarters, the party has also set up a call centre to augment the efforts. While over 250 calls are made from the call centre daily to get feedback from booth-level committees, the IT centre remains abuzz with activity. A team of five youths working takes care of the party’s Twitter handle posting pictures, videos of events, melas, public rallies of PM Narendra Modi and other big leaders.

Right now, this control centre is busy thrashing out a campaign programme for Modi, who is expected to address more than 10 rallies spread across seven-phase polls.
The party has planned its IT network under supervision of an ex-IITian Abhishek Kaushik. The entire state has been divided into 92 organisation divisions all having an Atal IT Centre. Besides, around 6,000 ‘cyber yodhas’ are out on job to propagate BJP’s ideology and agenda.

“Each region of the BJP has a separate WhatsApp group on which at least six to eight messages are forwarded at a time. In all, there are over 8,000 WhatsApp groups active”, Sanjay Rai, head of the war-room, said, adding, “Our aim is to tap over six crore voters out of which 4.5 crore are estimated to be active on Whatsapp, Twitter and  Facebook.

BJP’s digital battle appears to be yielding results to give the much-needed comfort to party leaders. “The BJP4UP campaign is yielding 1.80 crore impressions a week. According the data analytics findings on the conclusion of the four Parivartan Yatras by the BJP in the state, our social media campaign is 42 times more powerful than the similar campaign of the Samajwadi Party and 16 times of Congress in terms of connecting to the people,” said Amit Malviya, BJP’s IT cell head told The Sunday Standard.

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