Congress starts digital campaign for MCD polls

New Delhi: The Congress party in Delhi has started its digital campaign for the coming Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections, in which the party will connect with the voters online and tell them the achievements of the party. The digital campaigning started after the party recently concluded with its “pol kholabhiyan”, in which the party president was scheduled to cover three wards a day. A senior Congress leader said: “We visited every ward giving the message of misrule in MCD under the leadership of BJP and for 70 days at a stretch we visited 70 constituencies of Delhi.”
According to a party member, the party’s door-to-door campaigning was stopped once Delhi saw an increase in Covid cases but now the Congress has speeded up its digital campaign where it will continue to induct new members.
As there are currently 14000 booths in Delhi, the party is targeting at least 100 members from every booth. Sunil Kumar, Congress spokesperson for Delhi said, “We are planning to have workers in every booth. We are aiming for 14 lakh active members in the party, and for that, we have started this digital membership abhiyan, where we will recruit and verify members for the party.”
The party has recruited “enrollers”, and enroller will enrolat least a hundred members from every booth by using their phones. The enrollers will further tell the people about the achievements of the party and the benefits it has given in its tenure.
A Congress member said, “Those who find us relevant and accept the work that our party had done, we take their voter card number and tell them to send us their selfies. We then submit all the details to the AICC control room. After verification, they getthe identity cards immediately and then becomeverified members.”
According to the party functionary, a similar exercise of recruiting members has been undertaken by the BJP and Aam Aadmi Party. “A person willing to become a member of either of the party has to just give a missed call on one of their particular numbers, then and there the person will receive a message that you have been made a member of BJP or Aam Aadmi Party,” he said.
A journalist who has been covering MCD, requesting not to be named, said, “There’s a good chance that Congress might come a distant third, at the same time BJP might be the principal opposition. In this election, there is a lot of anti-incumbency factor against the BJP which has been ruling the MCD since 2007. The party has been in power for 15 years and there isn’t any good feeling about it. The strong wave seems to be towards Aam Aadmi Party.”