The Madhya Pradesh BJP had hoped to take social media by storm on the afternoon of June 10; Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari was to feature in the state’s first virtual rally. The aim was to not only publicise the achievements of the Modi government in its sixth year, but also to use the rally as a soft launchpad for campaign mode. The state will soon see crucial byelections to 24 assembly seats.
However, just before the rally could begin, a June 8 clip—purportedly of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan addressing BJP workers in one of the constituencies up for election—went viral. “The (BJP) central leadership decided that the (Congress) government should fall. And was it possible to fell the government without Jyotiraditya Scindia ji and Tulsi bhai (Tulsiram Silawat, former MLA of Sanwer)?” he asked in the clip.
Hundreds of Congress-supporting accounts had posted the clip, claiming that Chouhan had openly admitted to the conspiracy to dislodge the Congress government. The clip drowned out the Gadkari rally.
Scores of memes and slogans surfaced, and #BJPloktantrapedaaghai (BJP is a stain on democracy) was soon the number one trend—it was featured in more than 52,000 unique tweets and reached 90 million users, claimed the state Congress social media and IT department.
Before the furore had died down, another clip popped up. It allegedly featured a female Congress worker from Ashoknagar district talking to Jyotiraditya Scindia on phone, claiming that she had paid 050 lakh to one of his staffers for an assembly ticket for her daughter-in-law.
Then came the third audio clip, allegedly of Scindia supporter and former minister Imarti Devi, who is heard threatening a worker for telling her that she was losing support among people in her constituency. Yet another clip appeared, in which a policeman claimed that Scindia was getting him posted in Lahar, the constituency of former Congress minister Govind Singh, allegedly to cause Singh discomfort. The policeman was later suspended.
Said political commentator and avid social media user Shams Ur Rehman Alavi: “During these past three months, the party (Congress) has surely sharpened its strategy, managing to impact the public perception regarding the role of the BJP in dislodging its government, [in] probably allowing Covid-19 to spread due to this reason and [in] the consequent failure to prevent the pandemic from exploding in the state and elsewhere.”
Also, the Congress seems to have foiled Scindia’s attempts to portray himself as someone the party neglected, by painting him and his supporters as betrayers who flipped for money, added Alavi.
Political observer Manish Dixit agreed that the Congress looked far sharper online compared with the BJP, which usually has the edge on social media. “The Congress has [also] taken up issues that directly concern the common people—inflated electricity bills, problems faced by farmers, students forced to appear for exams amid a pandemic, the rising crime rate and so on,” he said. “They managed to generate interesting hashtags like ‘Shivraj atta chor hai’ (Shivraj is a wheat-flour thief) and coin terms like ‘Bikaulal’ (one who is sold), which have been a hit with the people.”
Dixit said that, at a time when there is no physical connect with the voter, the Congress has definitely stolen a march on the BJP in the online world. “This constant campaign can definitely have an impact on the voters’ mind, although only a section of them are on social media,” he said.
However, Abhay Tiwari, the key man behind the Congress’s online strategy, said that his party would definitely win more than 19 of the 24 seats. “We noticed during the political turmoil in March that social media users were leaning towards the Congress’s stand that dislodging the government was a BJP conspiracy and that huge money was involved in it,” the chief of the state Congress IT department told THE WEEK. “So, we decided to use that momentum and sharpened our attack. We coined terms like ‘Jaichand’ (a historical figure said to have betrayed Prithviraj Chauhan against invader Muhammad Ghori), ‘Bikaulal’, ‘Shri-ant’ (Mr End; Scindia is commonly called ‘Shrimant’) and ‘Panauti’ (bad omen, for Chouhan), and also convinced people that the ex-MLAs had taken 035 crore each for the deal.”
The Congress also conducted online polls to gauge the public mood, and even pitted BJP supporters against each other. “For example, we asked who the ‘Panauti’ was and we found BJP supporters voting on the Scindia option and Scindia supporters voting on the Chouhan option,” said Tiwari.
“For the past three months, we have been gaining 3,000 followers a day on Twitter (@INCMP had 653k followers as on June 15) and we have surpassed the BJP handle (@BJP4MP had 561k followers),” he added. “During the past two years, we gained five lakh followers; the BJP managed just one lakh. Also, among the Congress state units, we have the most Twitter followers.”
The party has posted a WhatsApp coordinator in 58,000 of 63,000 polling booths in the state; these coordinators spread content on non-political groups. Also, the party has a Facebook page and a Twitter handle for each of the 230 assembly constituencies. The Youth Congress and the National Students’ Union of India are an important part of the online strategy.
Senior Congress leaders have also been active on social media. “Kamal Nath ji monitors the social media campaign daily,” said Tiwari. Others involved in strategy making and guidance, said sources, include state Congress media cell chairman Jitu Patwari, former minister Sajjan Singh Verma and former assembly speaker N.P. Prajapati.
Akshay Hunka, a Congress member who is working to bring together a ‘Twitter activist team’ from among party supporters, said people were organically sharing his tweets on this effort. “This shows people’s inclination to become part of a campaign that seeks to bring out the truth of the BJP’s games,” he said.
For his part, Shivraj Dabi, the coordinator of the IT department of the Madhya Pradesh BJP, said there could not be comparisons because the ruling party will always focus on its achievements and future plans, while the opposition will try to find faults. “The Congress campaign is simply focused on distracting people from real issues and thrives on fake information,” he said. “We want to create awareness among people, tell them about welfare schemes and help them. The Congress might be getting a little more visibility because of its irrelevant and false attacks. We do not want to lend credence to everything they say by responding to them. Only when it is about big leaders or sensitive matters do we clarify the situation with facts and figures.”