Lok Sabha elections 2019: AAP uses ‘Gully Boy’ songs to woo voters in South Delhi
The AAP has already circulated the ‘Sher Aaya’ track in few closed WhatsApp groups, but Azadi is yet to be circulated in social media.
Early this month, the Aam Aadmi Party had picked up a popular track, ‘Apna Time Aayega’, from the Hindi movie Gully Boy and circulated it by replacing the original video with photos and video clips of the party’s South Delhi candidate Raghav Chadha.
In April, the AAP will be using two more videos from the same movie for their election campaign in South Delhi. The two new Gully Boy tracks that have recently been edited for the AAP’s campaign in South Delhi are ‘Sher Aaya’ and ‘Azadi’, AAP functionaries said on Thursday.
The Ranveer Singh-Alia Bhatt starrer Gully Boy, released on February 14, 2019, is a movie based on a Muslim rap artist who resides in a Mumbai slum. While the track ‘Aapna Time Aayega’ was originally performed by Singh himself, ‘Sher Aaya’ was performed by Mumbai-based artiste Divine and ‘Azadi’ was performed by artistes Divine and Dub Sharma together.
“The Apna Time Aayega video did really good over Facebook and WhatsApp. It is still doing the rounds. That’s why we decided to go for two more Gully Boy videos,” said Rahul T, a campaign consultant working with the AAP’s South Delhi team.
Rahul had earlier worked as campaign designer for the Samajwadi Party ahead of the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. He had also campaigned for the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014 general elections, he said.
The ‘Sher Aya’ mix for the AAP, Rahul said, is largely based on an incident on October 31 when during the Run for Unity programme, BJP MP from South Delhi, Ramesh Bidhuri, had allegedly assaulted and misbehaved with a group of Poorvanchalis (people from eastern Uttar Pradesh)
Ramesh Bidhuri said that the incident was politicised by AAP. “The AAP made it a regional issue by playing the Poorvanchali card. Poorvanchalis have elected me as MLA thrice (before he was elected an MP). Let them (AAP) use anything in their campaign,” he said.
Rahul said the second song, Azadi, seeks freedom from “communal politics, hooliganism, regionalism and discrimination.”
The AAP has already circulated the ‘Sher Aaya’ track in few closed WhatsApp groups, but Azadi is yet to be circulated in social media. “We have to be careful in how we share this video as it can be misinterpreted and politicised,” said Rahul.
While it was a team of three, which had created the ‘Apna Time Aayega’ mix for the campaign in South Delhi Lok Sabha constituency, the other two were produced by Rahul on his own, said people associated with Chadha’s campaign team.