Big parties leverage IT power to reach voters, smaller ones sulk

• BJP, SP and Cong go digital full throttle
• Smaller parties suffer resource crunch

Lucknow: The traditional election campaigning method has gone out of practice in the 2022 assembly elections in the wake of the Covid surge.

Now, the digital medium is being aggressively used to support the mainstream campaign and the elction war is being fought from the war room of the IT cell of the political parties in UP.

The BJP has a dedicated network of IT cells in place, ever since the 2014 general election. It is apparently prepared with its well oiled organizational machinery and strong resources for hybrid election campaign.

The door-to-door campaign and digital campaign are being carried out simultaneously. The party is implementing a mega plan to reach out to every house falling under 1.74 lakh polling booths within all 403 assembly segments.

The digital wing of the SP is also carrying out the task with full engrossment.

All the MPsMLAs, party office bearers and workers have been instructed to digitally connect more and more people. The press conference of Akhilesh Yadav has already been sent through live links on WhatsApp groups and social platforms.

The Congress claims that the party’s presence in the digital world has increased significantly due to its ‘Prakshan Se Parakram’ campaign.

An army of two lakh trained party workers has been prepared through more than 1800 camps, which have become particularly proficient in using social media.

Social media teams of BSP, Aam Aadmi Party and RLD have also become very active. According to experts, the digital world is the game of money, to make the campaign effective and ensure wider public reach, the level of expenditure will also be higher.

But barring the big parties, small parties and those contesting elections in an individual way are feeling themselves in a vulnerable position in the digital arena as they are severely short of resource and infrastructure.

That is why the demand for the level play field has started gaining momentum.