JOIN USYoung volunteers buzzing AAP mantra at 11th hour
The Aam Aadmi Party has kicked of its final round of electioneering, calling it the “buzz” campaign.
Young volunteers are being encouraged to take to the streets, holding banners, distributing party caps and persuading voters to vote for the “common man’s party”.
The AAP is relying heavily on this volunteer-driven campaign because the party doesn’t have enough funds to buy ad spaces, a party leader said.
In public places like malls, Metro stations and traffic signals, party workers try to engage people with intriguing posters. “Ab ki baar Modi sarkar? Yani a bael mujhe mar! (This time Modi government? Means inviting trouble!” reads one such poster, which takes a dig at the BJP’s popular advertising campaign. “Don’t Honk! If you like to make a lot of noise about nothing. Join the Congress or BJP,” reads another poster at a traffic signal.
Sandeep Narwani, a party member, said that AAP distributed some 50,000 AAP caps on Monday. And on the final day of campaigning, the party plans to distribute one lakh of those caps.
“Caps stand for our party’s ideology. So there are more takers for it,” Narwani said, explaining why the AAP focuses more on distributing caps than pamphlets.
Vartika Saxena, a working woman who was campaigning for AAP outside Rajiv Chowk Metro station, said that sometimes passers-by also quiz them why should they vote for the party. She complains about “fanatic” BJP supporters.
“I campaigned for my party even during the Delhi Assembly elections. But I make sure that I don’t miss classes,” Geetanjali, a student of mass communication at IP University, said.
Narwani said volunteers are coming to the party’s office in central Delhi for collecting advertisement material. “We posted about the buzz campaign on social media,” he said, adding that the party received good response from volunteers in the last leg of the campaign.
The party has over 12,000 active volunteers, party sources said. In door-to-door campaign for the Lok Sabha polls, which started two weeks ago, the party claims to have covered over 20 lakh homes.
AAP on a Facebook post also asked supporters to take print-outs of the party’s posters and paste them at places where maximum people could see.
Party chief Arvind Kejriwal, who is doing roadshows for AAP candidates in the city, slammed pre-poll predictions. “My experience with our recent on-ground campaigns tell a different story,” he wrote.