BJP designs a WhatsApp strategy for 2019 Lok Sabha elections

New Delhi, Sep 29: As we move closer to the next general election, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems to be refashioning its strategy to gear up to the challenge of 2019 with ubiquitous smartphone.

A "stall activity plan" arranged by party president Amit Shah has just requested that state units aggregate the rundown of advanced cell conveying voters in each surveying station.

Mobile phone pramukh will be a key player in the Bharatiya Janata Party for 2019.

Around 900,000 of these, one for each surveying stall or station (there are 927,533), will drive the gathering's broad WhatsApp-based battle for the parliamentary decision, flowing uncommonly outlined crusade material.Each of these pramukhs will be given an advanced mobile phone.

Idea is to have 35000-40000 social media volunteers in every Lok Sabha Constituency through these Cell-Phone Prabharis. All it aims at reaching out to one to three lakh new voters in every constituency apart from the existing ones.

Party leaders MPs, MLAs, other elected representatives and office bearers will be asked to identify these cell phone pramukhs in the first round; the pramukhs will then create three WhatsApp group for each polling station, each group consisting of 256 persons (the maximum allowed on the platform), according to the plan.

For political parties, social media has become a potent campaign tool, both for collecting information as well as customising and getting their message to voters, and it's being used the world over.

Barack Obama first demonstrated the power of Twitter and Facebook messaging in his presidential campaign of 2008.

Politicians such as BJP's Narendra Modi and Aam Aadmi Party's Arvind Kejriwal had used the Obama campaign model on social media to reach young voters in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 and Delhi Assembly elections of 2015.

The Facebook family Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram accounts for 95% of social or communication app usage in India, according to an Omidyar Network report of December 2017.