Brand BJP strips lotus logo of colour

In order to ensure that voters are not left confused when it comes to pressing the right button on polling day, the BJP has ordered cadres to project the party symbol minus all adornments and colour.
Brand BJP strips lotus logo of colour

The BJP wants better brand recall for itself. So to begin with, as the election campaign picks up, the party is launching a drive to de-saffronize its election symbol, the lotus. Sounds strange, but it’s true.

The BJP wants to replace the kamal (lotus) which exists in various forms, shapes and colours especially saffron, into merely a blue-lined diagram.  No, it’s not vaastu at work for the astrologically inclined party, but advertising sense.

Unlike the saffron version of the lotus that appears in all party literature and publicity material, the BJP’s election symbol as it appears on the electronic voting machines (EVM) is a lined diagram of the flower in blue. And the electorate, so used to seeing a saffron lotus, is often left confused when presented with the shorn-of-all-adornment figure.

Worried that support drummed up in favour of the party, thanks to intensive campaigning, may not translate into voters pressing the correct button on the electronic voting machine, BJP President Rajnath Singh has shot off a “most urgent” letter to his partymen, asking them to use the correct symbol of the party – a lined diagram of the national flower.

“The symbol kamal (lotus) may not be decorated, distorted or made colourful in any way to make it more attractive. By doing so, the voters get confused at the time of voting,” Rajnath Singh said in his November 2 letter.

“The karyakartas (cadre) may pay special attention to the fact that our voters are aware of the actual lined diagram of the symbol Kamal, and that is the only Kamal registered in their minds,” he added.

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The New Indian Express
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