New Delhi: Their day begins early morning around 5 am that goes on till 11 pm in the night. Unlike their friends in swanky corporate offices, they operate discreetly from a “war room” at the Bharatiya Janata Party’s erstwhile headquarters at 11, Ashoka Road here. They are the social media warriors of the ruling party which is seeking re-election in the ongoing general elections.
While the rank and file of the BJP, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah, are leading a high-octane campaign on the ground, a team of nearly 500 professionals is fighting it out in the digital world. From handling day-to-day campaign strategies to ensuring extensive digital presence and from circulating achievements of the BJP-led government to attacking the Opposition, the social media war room carries out the activities on a much larger scale compared to its rivals Congress and other political parties.
A senior BJP leader said party president Amit Shah, general secretary (organisation) Ram Lal and other senior functionaries closely monitor the activities at the war room which adds teeth to the propaganda machinery, the most effective tool in electioneering. The social media war room engages mostly media professionals, lawyers and graduates from various management and engineering institutions.
“Approximately 480 professionals from various fields are working on a 360-degree campaign, targeting the voters as well as communicating with the party’s booth managers at the block level. The war room takes stock of their preparedness for various rallies, particularly that of Prime Minister Modi and Amit Shah, workers’ mobilisation to polling booths on the polling day. Besides media tracking, monitoring social media activities of Opposition parties and their leaders and trends on social media are done on an hourly basis,” the BJP leader said.
The social media team is responsible for digital promotion of the BJP’s campaigns like “Main Bhi Chowkidar” and “Mera Booth, Sabse Majboot”, among others. The team uses various media like NaMo app, WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google Groups, YouTube in Hindi, English and various other regional languages to connect with voters and workers in the respective states. The war room constantly receives reports and feedback from the media cells in all states.
A dedicated team has been assigned the responsibility of tracking the rallies, speeches and tweets of Prime Minister Modi. The team analyses the public and media response to Modi’s speeches and campaigns launched by the BJP. For instance, the “Main Bhi Chowkidar” campaign launched by the BJP on 31 March, received nearly 30 crore impressions. Similarly, the PM’s speeches on the issue of national security are drawing the maximum public attention, according to the analysis of the social media team.
A BJP leader associated with social media war room told The Sunday Guardian that Amit Shah and Ram Lal were closely monitoring the operations on a daily basis. The two leaders often make conference calls from the war room, communicating to nearly two lakh block level booth in-charges across the country at one go.
The office space at the Ashoka Road premises comprises 10-12 big rooms with dozens of computer terminals and laptops installed where different groups of volunteers and professionals carry out the tasks assigned to them.
Each of these teams is assigned different tasks. For instance, one wing analyses the polling data, the other tracks news channels and social media sites. Similarly, other teams gauge the public mood and accordingly reach out to people on different digital platforms.