Samajwadi Party 'war room' breathes life in SP campaign

As SP chief Akhilesh Yadav criss-crosses Uttar Pradesh to drum up support, the ruling party's hi-tech 'war room' here is working round-the-clock as his "eyes and ears" to breathe life in his hectic electioneering by updating him on all key developments.

"We are synchronising the entire campaign with the tagline of 'kaam bolta hai' highlighting the works done by the CM," Aashish Yadav, in-charge of the war room that has been set up on the first floor of Janeshwar Mishra Trust office here told PTI.

"We have designed a 360 degree campaign to reach people at booth level from all possible ways including mass media, social media and door-to-door campaign," he said in an interview.

He said the war room has been divided in four main sections led by separate heads, who are experts in their own fields and have been doing the job voluntarily as they themselves "support Akhilesh". The four sections are news monitoring, research, creative and digital campaign.

These work as "eyes and ears" of the CM giving him relevant updates including on local issues as and when they unfold so that the chief minister can speak on those issues in his rallies, said Aashish, a communication expert.

Ahmed Aftab Naqvi, in his early 30s, who runs one of India's largest independent digital agencies from Mumbai, heads the digital section.

He says that with penetration of Internet in rural areas "social platforms like Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp are best ways to propagate our work".

"90 per cent of youths in UP are on WhatsApp. We are focusing on targeted reach by providing contents that they not only see or read, but also share and like making our campaign go viral," he said.