NEW DELHI: All political parties are gearing up for the last leg of campaigning as Delhi’s municipal corporation election is just a week away. On one hand, the major party figures are engaging local voters through door-to-door campaigning and public events. While on the other, social media campaigning is at its peak. In addition to the conventional methods, the use of social media has skyrocketed recently. The BJP-Delhi social media team is not wasting any time in exposing the Aam Aadmi Party on social media platforms in an effort to hinder their chances at winning.
The BJP’s social media team, which consists of 40–50 people, publishes more than 100 posts each day about the success of the party, the failure of the AAP, and news articles.
“We create posters depicting Kejriwal or Sisodia as movie characters by drawing inspiration from Bollywood. We used Sisodia’s image to criticise the booze scam on the Lootera movie poster,” said Rohit Upadhyay, a member of BJP’s social media team. He further added that the party has also launched a ‘Namo Cyber Yodha” campaign through which fifty thousand people volunteered as “Cyber Yodha”.
“These Cyber yodhas are present 24x7 on the ground, their primary function is to make videos reflecting AAP’s misgovernance in their areas. Interestingly, these people also live-streamed the BJP’s campaign on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter in their area. This way, the party can connect to the local voters” he added.
According to Upadhyay, if a BJP rally was live-streamed through their official page, it might have a national or state-level reach, but if a local “Cyber Yodha” was broadcasted, it would be seen by people in that region because of the Facebook algorithm.
For amplifying their voices, the BJP has created more than ten thousand Whatsapp groups with more than a hundred members in each group. As per the party officials, all the posters, videos and news clips were circulated in these Whatsapp groups, following which they post this on their Whatsapp status, Facebook and Instagram.
“The party has also made the target to trend at least one hashtag daily basis. Our hashtags — #MCDmeBhajpa, #AAPprotectscorruption and others also receive good traction on social media.” said a senior party official.
AAP candidates have the most no of criminal records: ADR
NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party has fielded 45 candidates with criminal records in municipal elections this year while the BJP has 27 such candidates, according to a report by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).
The AAP has pitched 250 candidates, out of which 248 self-sworn-affidavits were analysed by the ADR and 18 per cent of them have criminal records, the report said. Moreover, at least eight per cent of the AAP candidates have serious criminal cases against them, it stated.
Meanwhile, BJP has 11 per cent of candidates with such records and Congress has 10 per cent of them.
At least 139 candidates contesting the election this year have criminal cases against them. This accounts for nearly 10 per cent of total candidates this year as compared to 7 per cent in 2017. Six per cent of them have declared serious criminal cases against themselves.