Virtual Campaigns - Campaigning Goes Virtual

Is electioneering in India set to go all virtual in the time of the pandemic? Well, all eyes are on Bihar, which goes to the polls in October-November, and where a physical campaign seems an impossibility, at least for the next few months. Standard poll practices like gathering crowds for rallies, door-to-door campaigning or even a street corner meeting will be a challenge now, given the new physical distancing norms. Alive to this emerging situation, political parties have started gearing up for virtual campaigns.

- Amarnath K. Menon and Amitabh Srivastava

The BJP, with its vast IT cell, was first off the blocks. Union home minister and BJP chief strategist Amit Shah addressed the party’s first virtual rally, the ‘Bihar Jan Samvad’, on June 7, coinciding with the first anniversary of the Narendra Modi government 2.0. Shah’s virtual address underlined his “trust in the Nitish Kumar-led NDA registering a two-thirds majority in the assembly polls”, an assertion meant to tamp down media speculation of a rift among the alliance partners in the state. The past couple of weeks had seen some muscle-flexing among allies Janata Dal (United), the BJP and Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). Polls are due in less than four months and the BJP, like all other political parties, insists their focus is on rehabilitating the nearly three million migrant workers, who have returned to Bihar after losing jobs in the COVID-19 crisis. But the meticulous planning of the videoconference from Delhi, with flags and festoons in the backdrop, showed the party was keen to make even its virtual campaign come alive like the real thing. For a touch of reality, a small stage was also erected at the party office in Patna, where senior state BJP leaders sat through, clapping at strategic points, as is the practice on election battlegrounds.

Party spokesman Nikhil Anand claims the Shah show was viewed live by 10 million people. “We collected data from Facebook Live, which registered the maximum hits, besides traffic on our party’s home page, YouTube, Twitter and clicks on our links to arrive at this estimate,” he said. For perspective, some 40 million votes were cast in Bihar during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, with the NDA winning 39 of 40 seats in the state.