BJP connects with voters digitally ahead of ULB polls in UP

PRAYAGRAJ: With barely a week left for the polling day of urban local body polls (May 4), tolis of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are keeping social media pages abuzz to run campaigns and garner support of eligible voters.
The BJP leadership is in fact relying on its established network of followers on social media groups and is also fast adopting popular messaging platform WhatsApp extensively to reach out to voters at the grassroots level.

BJP’s social media campaigns are focused on highlighting the achievements of the BJP led union and state governments.
Party spokesman Rajesh Kesarwani told TOI, “Party leadership has appointed a 10 members toli to connect with eligible voters through social media platforms. We have deputed trained team of activists headed by whatsapp pramukh (like panna pramukh) to optimize the maximum use of social media platforms”.
As BJP is going all out to ensure a big win in the upcoming urban civic polls this year particularly focusing on those wards which have not been the party’s strongholds and targeting all community votebank,which have not traditionally been BJP supporters, the tolis are connecting voters in at least 22 such wards through whatsapp and social media platforms.
Apart from forming its own whatsapp groups of leaders on mandal, mohallah and gali (lane) wise, party is making its efforts to connect all net savvy users with the promise of overall development and improving law and order.
For this, micro-management at the booth level is being worked out, apart from mobilisation of social media cell activists at several levels. Kesarwani , meanwhile said “Connecting with eligible voters through social media has proved to be beneficial for party workers and we are prioritising the wards where we could not only register a win historically but also working overtime to expand its influence in such wards particularly located in minority dominated areas.”
The fact was that the BJP in 2017 urban municipal polls had won only 22 out of 80 wards and later, 15 more corporators from other camps joined the saffron camp. However, this time, party leadership have activated its cadre, setting up new IT and social media cells in all three urban based assembly seats including Allahabad North, Allahabad South and Allahabad West to aim to connect tech savvy voters.