The BJP media cell has gone high-tech from Saturday with the party setting up a control room with 10 television sets in a posh hotel hired for effective communication through electronic channels.
BJP‘s national spokesman Sambit Patra will supervise media briefings from the Bhopal centre which will be connected to Indore, Jabalpur, Rewa, Sagar and Gwalior. Party’s spokesmen are being deployed in these centres too.
The Congress, on the other hand, has set up its media centre in three rooms of the party’s state headquarters in Bhopal. National spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi will head the centre while other national spokespersons will be positioned in Indore, Gwalior and Jabalpur.
The BJP media centre is equipped with sophisticated electronic gadgets including a press conference hall, 15 computers and round-the-clock live telecast arrangements. Two VIP suites in the hotel have been reserved for BJP national president Amit Shah’s stay in Bhopal. Shah’s team has already taken over campaigning, leaving state leadership with little to do.
This is the first time ever that the BJP national leadership is proactively controlling campaigning in Madhya Pradesh. In previous elections, state BJP leaders used to decide practically everything from identifying subjects for media spokesmen to fixing dates for star campaigners.
In the Congress, however, the command is still with the state leadership under PCC chief Kamal Nath.
