In the lead up to the high stakes political battle across seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi on May 25, workers of both the INDIA alliance and the BJP are on the ground to mobilise support for their leaders through public meetings and campaigns. The BJP is contesting all seven seats, while the AAP candidates are in fray in four and the Congress in three.       

Newslaundry hit the Chandni Chowk Lok Sabha constituency to look at the ground-level strategies, campaign management and camaraderie among the workers of the political parties, particularly the INDIA bloc’s AAP and Congress, which is contesting the polls together for the first time. 

In Chandni Chowk, the Congress contestant is JP Aggarwal and the BJP has fielded Praveen Khandelwal. Newslaundry spoke to the workers of the two parties and the leaders’ supporters about their publicity campaign, outreach and ground work.  

The BJP office bearers said that about 8,000 of its workers in Chandni Chowk have been divided into four categories: district, division, power centre and booth, and they are connected through apps such as WhatsApp, Saral and NaMo. They start their day at 7 am with door-to-door campaigning and distribution of pamphlets. The workers said they reach out to people about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s achievements and usually end their day at 11 pm after meetings. Their pitch for votes include mention of Ram mandir and PM Modi, not Khandelwal. 

On the contrary, the INDIA bloc cumulatively has a little over 2,000 workers in the Chandni Chowk constituency at the district level, block level and the booths. The workers begin their door-to-door campaign at 10 am by distributing leaflets and explaining their party symbol to the locals. 

Watch.