Posters to pep talks: Targeted messaging at heart of BJP’s grassroots campaign for Delhi polls

During a door-to-door campaign in Sector 3, the workers, while waiting for BJP candidate Sharma to turn up, warm up by interacting with locals and putting up posters on walls and doors. While talking to the party workers, residents flag issues of maintenance in their localities. “The parks here are unclean. Plastic pada rehta hai. Do mahine se safai nai hui hai (Garbage is strewn all over,,, it’s been two months since the area was cleaned),” a resident tells a BJP worker.

As the cluster of party workers marches forward, with dhols and BJP flags, slogans are raised to hail Prime Minister Narendra Modi — “Modi ki parchai hai, Anil Sharma Bhai hai (Anil Sharma is Modi’s shadow)”.

Geeta Bharadwaj, 50, has been a resident of R K Puram for 25 years. Her husband, Pawan Bharadwaj, who works with the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has been allotted their quarters in RK Puram. Free electricity and water — the common poll promises in manifestos of the AAP, BJP and Congress — are non-issues for them. “There will hardly be any month when my house uses less than 200 units of electricity. So I am okay with paying for 24×7 electricity and clean water. My issue is safety and hygiene in my area. I last saw AAP MLA Parmila Tokas four years ago. She stays in Munirka all the time,” she says.

Babita Rawat, 45, who has been living in R K Puram for 22 years and is currently staying in a Type 4 (officer’s government quarters) house allotted to her husband, is vigorously campaigning for the BJP candidate from the area. She has been involved in multiple door-to-door campaigns.

“Not just the pay commission, but for government workers, the safety of their colonies is also important. Across Sector 3, darkness sets in after 7 pm. Most parks don’t have lights. Then people sit in these areas to drink and smoke. People are concerned about their children, who are scared to go near these parks,” she says.

Babita’s husband works in the central government while she is associated with an NGO. She says the residents even submitted a signed petition to get streetlights. “Even the MCD car doesn’t come regularly to pick up the garbage. I have to call and insist that it comes. Sometimes, people here have to pay someone else to do this,” she says.

Party workers say that while most officer quarter residents avail the benefits of the central government schemes, they need to explain the party pitch in lower rank quarters and jhuggi clusters where small schemes alter the course of monthly expenses.

“When we go to areas like KD Colony (a jhuggi cluster in R K Puram’s Sector 12), there are questions about AAP’s schemes. We assure them about the continuance of freebies under AAP and also tell them about the subsidised gas cylinders and other schemes of Modi ji. They are not concerned about parks and security,” says Mamta Sharma.

Hema, 36, another BJP worker on the campaign trail, who has lived in the R K Puram’s Sector 9 market area for the last 12 years, says water taps and sewage problems are also big issues in jhuggis. “In Sector 9 and Sector 12 jhuggis, people complain about standing in queues in the market area to get water from taps. The sewers in these areas are also clogged. Here, we try to convince them that all these problems will be solved once there is a double-engine government,” she says.

Ram Avtar, 48, has been living in a tin roof accommodation in R K Puram’s Sector 3 since the 1970s. Working under a government contractor in the Safdarjung area, he says that this time, he is torn between the central schemes of the BJP government and the state benefits of AAP.

“I had voted once for AAP when Ilmi ji (Shazia Ilmi) was the candidate. Before that, it was Congress. But now, the BJP is talking about giving permanent jobs to contract workers like us. That would create a stable income for me. I have to sometimes wait two months for my salary, and my wife has to earn to run the household… I will vote for the party that delivers according to my needs,” he says.