Selfie is the in thing for politicians on campaign trail, seeking votes for themselves or their party candidates.
Selfies on campaign trail involves both, clicking photographs of themselves with people around or squeezing themselves in the frame when voters seek selfie with their leader.
Saying no to a selfie is not a done thing – even for those who are SPG protectee or have Z plus security.
Selfies are now an additional ritual of election campaign of the candidates and star-campaigners along with existing practices like touching the feet of elders at election meetings or village visits, hugging children, and sharing tea and samosa.
Congress general secretary (east UP) Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who took a plunge in active politics this poll season, is visibly the most prolific ‘selfie-taker’ and ‘selfie-poser’. She began it on the very day she made a symbolic initiation with a road show in Lucknow – from airport to the UP Congress Committee (UPCC) office.
Atop the bus en route the UPCC headquarters, Priyanka posed for selfies that Rahul Gandhi took on the bus and then she herself clicked some.
Since then, her social media accounts, especially Instagram, is replete with selfies that she takes or poses for. By now, she has taken selfies all over the state including in Ghaziabad, Lucknow, Amethi and Rae Bareli.
{{/usCountry}}Since then, her social media accounts, especially Instagram, is replete with selfies that she takes or poses for. By now, she has taken selfies all over the state including in Ghaziabad, Lucknow, Amethi and Rae Bareli.
{{/usCountry}}The profile picture of Samajwadi Party national president Akhilesh Yadav’s Twitter account shows children taking a selfie with him while he is perched on a bicycle saddle at the Gomti River Front – one of his pet projects during his tenure as UP chief minister.
Unlike Priyanka, he himself doesn’t take selfies but lets people click as many as they want whenever and wherever he is in close interaction with people. His wife and Kannauj MP Dimple Yadav has also posed for many selfies with supporters during her rallies and roadshows.
The trend cuts across party lines. Bharatiya Janata Party’s Ghazipur MP and union minister Manoj Sinha whose constituency is going to polls in the seventh and the last phase of Lok Sabha elections also takes selfies. He has posted many selfies on his twitter account ‘Chowkidar Manoj Sinha’.
Samajwadi Party’s Lucknow candidate Poonam Sinha, an actor and wife of actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha has also taken selfies during campaigning.
Congress president and candidate from Amethi Rahul Gandhi and BJP candidate and union minister Smriti Irani are locked in a fierce electoral battle. Both are posing for a lot for selfies with the people of their constituency.
The top leaders of each party fly a lot in chartered small planes and helicopters. They take selfies with pilots and crew and also pose for selfies with them.
Priyanka Gandhi posted a selfie she took with her woman helicopter pilot and posted it on her Instagram and Twitter accounts.
However, UP’s most talked about ‘politician selfie’ happened on the stage in Saifai village when Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav’s son Prateek Yadav and daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav took several selfies with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the wedding reception of Mulayam’s grandnephew and Lalu Yadav’s daughter. That was in 2015 when selfies in politics were not a trend.