Senior Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be addressing a virtual rally in poll-bound Bihar on June 9, followed by similar rallies by other party leaders and party president J. P. Nadda.
Assembly elections for 243 constituencies in Bihar are due later this year, in October-November.
State BJP president Sanjay Jaiswal said that Mr. Shah will address “at least 1 lakh people across all 243 constituencies in Bihar through video conference and Facebook Live”. Others who prefer to listen to his speech could so on the social networking site, he added. “The virtual rally will begin our digital campaign for Assembly elections in the State,” Mr. Jaiswal further said.
Mr. Nadda, party sources said, is expected to address people of north and south Bihar separately.
Other parties, too, have set-off their poll campaign machinery on social media, with regular tweets and comments by their leaders. Observers say that the BJP, with its huge IT cell and media team, has a significant advantage over its political adversaries in a digital campaign.
In Bihar, the BJP has shared power with alliance partner Janata Dal-United (JD-U) for a long time.
While replying to questions, Mr. Jaiswal also expressed thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for “financial assistance to Bihar at the time of the COVID-19 crisis”.
“Be it fixing problems of bad debts in banks or long-standing issues like triple talaq and Article 370, PM Modi’s government has always acted decisively. Even the low fatality rate in the country due to the COVID-19 outbreak is by virtue of the Prime Minister’s leadership, which is why he rules the hearts of the masses and would continue to do so,” Mr. Jaiswal added.
Earlier, the BJP focused on organising its booth-level workers for the elections.
Senior State BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi has also spoken previously of the party’s forthcoming digital campaign in place of old-style rallies due to the outbreak of the COVID-19.