<p>Thiruvananthapuram: From social media interventions to keeping the party workers down to the grassroots active, the war room of the Congress in Kerala played a key role in the historic victory of the United Democratic Front (UDF) with 102 seats.</p><p>Harsha Kanadam, son of former Karnataka Assembly speaker and former MLA from Srinivasapura K R Ramesh Kumar, has been heading the war room at the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram.</p>.Bengalurean heads the Congress war room in Kerala.<p>The war room became active much ahead of the polls. The key tasks were to ensure constant communication right from the state leadership to the grassroot levels as well as to carry out social interventions - both countering campaigns from the opposite camps as well as ensuring that the messages of the leadership reach the people at the grassroot level.</p><p>Among the 55 member war room majority were women. Many agencies and volunteers were also engaged in preparing contents.</p><p>"It was the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple gold heist related contents that dominated the social media campaigns apart from issues like man man-animal conflict, allegations against Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his family, corruptions and mismanagement in various departments like health and finance," KPCC general secretary and war room vice chairman P M Niyas.</p><p>Niyas said that the effective interventions of the war room indeed helped in avoiding massive elimination of voters during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Kerala, unlike many other states.</p><p>"We have been constantly reviewing the process on a case-by-case basis and kept on alerting the both level agents and workers to ensure that no genuine voters were left out. A mechanism to crosscheck the inputs received from the local level leaders were also put in place," he said.</p><p>During the campaign the service of the pro-UDF pensioners' organisations were used to collect feedback from the grassroot level regarding any lapses in campaign.</p><p>Local leaders were directed to form Whatsapp groups of 100 to 200 members of the locality to spread campaign contents. The response to the party's social media campaigns were also constantly monitored. Since a large number of NRIs were found to be following the election related contents on social media, the war room was also in constant touch with the NRIs to get feedback.</p><p>Youth Congress state secretary Rejith Raveendran, who was also a key player in the war room operations, said that targeted social media campaigns were carried out by categorising people in above 18 age groups, above 40 groups and above 60 groups.</p><p>"While the LDF was trying to project that all their MLAs performed well, the poor performance of MLAs could be exposed through social media," he said.</p><p>Niyas said that soon after the polling the war room could collect near accurate feedback from the grassroot level workers and give a report to the party leadership that the victory of UDF was sure in 84 seats and it can go up to 97. </p>
<p>Thiruvananthapuram: From social media interventions to keeping the party workers down to the grassroots active, the war room of the Congress in Kerala played a key role in the historic victory of the United Democratic Front (UDF) with 102 seats.</p><p>Harsha Kanadam, son of former Karnataka Assembly speaker and former MLA from Srinivasapura K R Ramesh Kumar, has been heading the war room at the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram.</p>.Bengalurean heads the Congress war room in Kerala.<p>The war room became active much ahead of the polls. The key tasks were to ensure constant communication right from the state leadership to the grassroot levels as well as to carry out social interventions - both countering campaigns from the opposite camps as well as ensuring that the messages of the leadership reach the people at the grassroot level.</p><p>Among the 55 member war room majority were women. Many agencies and volunteers were also engaged in preparing contents.</p><p>"It was the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple gold heist related contents that dominated the social media campaigns apart from issues like man man-animal conflict, allegations against Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his family, corruptions and mismanagement in various departments like health and finance," KPCC general secretary and war room vice chairman P M Niyas.</p><p>Niyas said that the effective interventions of the war room indeed helped in avoiding massive elimination of voters during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Kerala, unlike many other states.</p><p>"We have been constantly reviewing the process on a case-by-case basis and kept on alerting the both level agents and workers to ensure that no genuine voters were left out. A mechanism to crosscheck the inputs received from the local level leaders were also put in place," he said.</p><p>During the campaign the service of the pro-UDF pensioners' organisations were used to collect feedback from the grassroot level regarding any lapses in campaign.</p><p>Local leaders were directed to form Whatsapp groups of 100 to 200 members of the locality to spread campaign contents. The response to the party's social media campaigns were also constantly monitored. Since a large number of NRIs were found to be following the election related contents on social media, the war room was also in constant touch with the NRIs to get feedback.</p><p>Youth Congress state secretary Rejith Raveendran, who was also a key player in the war room operations, said that targeted social media campaigns were carried out by categorising people in above 18 age groups, above 40 groups and above 60 groups.</p><p>"While the LDF was trying to project that all their MLAs performed well, the poor performance of MLAs could be exposed through social media," he said.</p><p>Niyas said that soon after the polling the war room could collect near accurate feedback from the grassroot level workers and give a report to the party leadership that the victory of UDF was sure in 84 seats and it can go up to 97. </p>