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Lok Sabha elections 2019: Campaign monitors, eight war rooms, 5,000 messengers in AAP’s poll team
To combat fake news and rumours, the party has created a battery of ‘sandesh vahaks’ (messengers). “We will have 5,392 sandesh vahaks – two people at each polling station. Their job is to communicate our message within two hours to the area-level volunteers,” the AAP leader said.
Intensifying its campaign in Delhi, which goes to polls on May 12, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Tuesday said it would fight the Lok Sabha elections with a force of at least 1.5 lakh workers comprising party leaders, legislators, councillors and volunteers.
The party has restructured its cadre and created an ‘emergency feedback team’ of 14 people who will track the campaign performance of the seven AAP candidates, party leaders and legislators.
“It is from this special team that two undercover party leaders will be deployed in each of the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. They will conduct random inspections to see how much of our campaign strategy is actually being implemented on ground. They will gauge the response of voters to our campaigns and check the schedules of candidates and leaders,” Gopal Rai, AAP’s Delhi unit convener, said.
Rai said the need for such a team emerged after one of their Lok Sabha candidates miffed people after he cancelled eight public meetings in a single day due to time constraints. “He had scheduled 15 meetings in a single day, which was unrealistic. Such mistakes evoke a negative response in people, which is what this special team will keep a check on,” he said.
To combat fake news and rumours, the party has created a battery of ‘sandesh vahaks’ (messengers). “We will have 5,392 sandesh vahaks – two people at each polling station. Their job is to communicate our message within two hours to the area-level volunteers,” the AAP leader said.
To ensure smooth coordination with the top leadership, AAP is setting up eight war rooms. There would be one in every Lok Sabha constituency and a central war room at the party headquarters in ITO. The party is deploying 77 observers in the city – one for each Lok Sabha seat and one in each of the 70 assembly constituencies.
“Each Lok Sabha observer will have 10 assembly observers under him/her. While the assembly observers will give daily reports to the Lok Sabha observer, the latter will report to the central war room,” Rai said.
To campaign in the lanes of residential colonies and markets , the party has formed 560 teams, each with 40-50 people. Every ward will have two such teams who will conduct road shows for three hours daily and distribute pamphlets of AAP convener and chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s letter on attaining full statehood in Delhi.
“To pump up the party’s campaign in the last three days, AAP will deploy 1,38,160 vijay pramukhs whose task will be to bring people out to vote and seek support for the party. By April 7, we will deploy 69,080 at the polling booths and the deployment will be doubled by May 10,” the senior party leader said. Delhi has 13816 polling booths.
