BJP's social media war room (Photo/ANI)

Gujarat Assembly polls: BJP's social media war room in action as polling day approaches

By Ankur Gupta | Updated: Nov 19, 2022 17:41 IST

Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], November 19 (ANI): A full-fledged centralised social media war room has been set up in Ahmedabad by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) owing to the upcoming assembly elections, from where the social media volunteers - observe social media accounts of the opposition parties, create, react on various hot topics around the political scenario in the state and share the same to more than 50,000 groups on WhatsApp.Dr Pankaj Shukla, State Co-ordinator of IT and Social Media for BJP told ANI, "We have made this social media war room at the BJP Media Centre especially for the elections, where more than 100 social media warriors (volunteers) are working and more than 10000 responsible Karyakartas are working across the state."The social media cell of the BJP is active 365 days but owing to the elections, this special war room has been created where the social media warriors, as the party calls them, will hustle to create and share content, messages and reels on social media platforms throughout the day."We observe and share the day-to-day campaigns with the people as well as different types of content created by the party," Shukla added.The warriors work to share the content with 50,000 Whatsapp groups across the state and they also handle all the social media handles of the state account - BJP4Gujarat. The social media warriors also handle the district pages of the state and post on those accounts as well.The social media war room also works to share important parts of the speeches of the national leaders during their campaigning in the state including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP National President JP Nadda, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, State president CR Paatil and others."The social media war room follows a strategy depending upon the topics that are trending in politics. They observe the statements of the Opposition parties against the BJP and create videos and memes in reply to it and share the same on various social media platforms. They also make hashtags and more than 10,000 karyakartas share the same, hence they trend the hashtags," stated the state Co-ordinator.Kalpesh, South Zone incharge at the war room said, "We also observe what the Opposition says about the BJP leaders and accordingly make videos of that particular leader in reply to the accusation and share it."Gujarat where the ruling party which has been in power for over 27 years will be seeking its seventh term in office.Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been Gujarat's longest-serving chief minister from 2001 till 2014.The state has been a BJP stronghold for a long and the party has set its sight on returning to power with a handsome majority this time as well.However, it faces a stiff electoral challenge from the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which has named Isudan Gadhvi as its chief ministerial candidate.Congress is also hoping to put its best electoral foot forward to unseat the BJP government.The state of Gujarat which has 182 assembly constituencies will go for polling in two phases on December 1 and 5. The counting of votes will occur on December 8, which coincides with Himachal Pradesh's result date. (ANI)

 

Representative image.

Thousands of NRIs from across the world to visit Gujarat for election campaigning

By Ankur Gupta Suratwala | Updated: Nov 18, 2022 14:45 IST

Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], November 18 (ANI): With the Assembly elections in Gujarat approaching, not only the people of the state but also the non-resident Indians (NRIs) especially Gujaratis are equally excited to choose and vote for their favourite leader and party and 25,000 of them are reaching Gujarat from across the world to campaign for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).Digant Sompura, Convenor of the Foreign contact department told ANI, "Whenever elections are to be held in India, people from across the World have their eyes on it. Especially when the elections are in Gujarat, the excitement and curiosity increase due to PM Modi's Gujarat connection."This time with the entry of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Gujarat and the triangular fight, people are all the more curious about the Gujarat elections.Gujaratis across the world have a special connection with their home state and they do regularly give donations in their villages for the construction of schools, libraries and other development works and hence they have earned respect and a special position amongst their fellow villagers. Using this, the non-resident Gujaratis will campaign in the state and ask their villagers to vote in maximum numbers for the BJP.Sompura added, "There are about 20 lakh Indians residing in USA, out of which about 11-12 lac are Gujaratis. All these Gujaratis in the USA have a special connection with their home state and hence more and more people are trying to come to the state and will be campaigning for BJP. As per an estimate, the number of NRIs coming here for campaigning will be 25,000."Dr Vasudev Patel, National Organisation Secretary of BJP in the USA said, "We have the long-sightedness of PM Narendra Modi who knows what is the power and support of NRI's. 32 NRI's have already landed here in Gujarat from New Zealand, Australia and other parts and more people are set to land in the coming days from Fiji, Canada, USA and other countries."NRIs cannot vote in India as they are now citizens of other countries but still, they think they owe something to their country and hence they visit here at their own expense, taking a break from their work and business, to campaign during elections."After Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister of the country, the development in the country is skyrocketing and hence we are here to tell the people in our villages to vote for BJP," added Patel.About the campaigning strategy, Dr Vasudev said, "We follow two strategies for campaigning, one is the ground campaigning where the NRI's work on-ground, where they campaign in different villages and the other is campaigning online, which is done by people who could not make it to India, they campaign by making phone calls to their relatives, villagers, neighbours and tell them why they should vote for BJP. They also make online videos on it and share on the social media platforms."As of now, registration of about 90 people have been received who are coming to India, especially for campaigning and many come here without registering. Moreover, there are about 1000 people who have not given up their Indian citizenship, they will be coming to India, especially to vote. (ANI)