At a time when the BJP is spending Rs 500 crore (approx) on advertisements for television, newspaper etc, ignoring the ground level workers came as a rude shock for many. Many party workers were reluctant to work in mobilising voters in their respective areas.
Sources said each candidate has a budget of nearly Rs 50 lakhs (approx) for their party workers to execute ground level work on polling day. However, informed sources said some candidates even raised their budget to nearly Rs 15 to 20 crores for the purpose. It was learnt that situation started worsening since morning when senior leaders showed an ignorant attitude towards party workers. This angered many and instead of mobilising the ‘secured’ votes, they decided to stay away. Realising a major blunder, a last minute SOS was sent to RSS to mobilise the committed voters and in the evening the situation came under control.
So far as the media publicity management is concerned, several allegations have started pouring in the corridors of the BJP. The party has hired ‘Madison’ for media duties and has a person posted at 1, Lodi Estate (War Room). There are allegations that one has to negotiate a lot of ‘unholy’ deals to get advertisement in newspapers and televisions channels.
This publicity war room is managed by three key players including Piyush Goyal, Ajay Singh, and Arvind Gupta. Senior party leader Arun Jaitley is the convener of the committee.
On the other side, Aam Aadmi Party managed to mobilise all their resources from early morning and got committed voters out to vote.