PATNA: This election season, Bihar is missing its VIP choppers as well as hordes of buses used for ferrying crowds to political rallies. The traditional ‘business’ of elections has almost come to a halt as state goes to polls amid the pandemic.
Yet, guess who is happy? The LED TV and screen shop owners, as virtual rallies have made a smart entry into the scene. In the 2015 Assembly polls, 32 helicopters were booked by political parties, including 16 by the BJP.
This time around, only 11 have been hired — six by BJP and the rest by the JD(U) and others.
“Party rallies are limited for the three-phase polls. The focus is on virtual rallies through digital platforms,” says a senior BJP leader.
Money thus saved is being used for renting big LED screens and other platforms, he adds.
A single-engine helicopter is available for hire anywhere between Rs 80,000 and 1.5 lakh per hour depending on its seating capacity.
Hiring a twin-engine chopper can cost around Rs 4 lakh.
At present, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and BJP chief J P Nadda are the only ones travelling by helicopters to address rallies.
Uday Kumar Singh, president of Bihar Motor Transporters Federation, says virtual rallies have reduced the bus renting business to almost 2% compared with the 2015 and 2019 elections.
Compared to around 35,000 big passenger buses hired in 2015 polls and 40,000 in the 2019 elections, this time just 100 buses have been booked so far.
“This year, hardly any party has approached us for buses,” says Singh. But many electronic shop owners are a happy lot.
A trader who doesn’t want to be named says more than 1.5 lakh pieces of LED screens and TV sets of bigger sizes were sold in the last three months while around 50,000 pieces were rented to political parties.