Brand Akhilesh Yadav and the American style of campaigning

UP Elections 2017 - The 2014 general elections represent a watershed in the Indian electoral history in many ways. For one, it changed forever how campaigns are conducted in the country. The Lok Sabha poll campaign saw the then Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, creating a parallel campaign machinery outside of the party to take his word to the people. His campaign to become the Prime Minister had, in fact, kicked off even before the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) named him its Prime Ministerial candidate.

Citizens for Accountable Governance (led by political strategist Prashant Kishor) helped Modi run a political campaign that could have given any MNC giant a run for its money. Through his 360-degree campaign, Modi reached out to disparate voters using their own communication mediums. What made it stand out was the campaign’s focus on modern technology – social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp were used extensively and effectively to create a cult following for Modi and turn the election into an almost Presidential campaign. The result: Narendra Modi seemed to be the only candidate around.

Lessons from this campaign have been learnt by other political parties as well – some more than the others. Later, similar ways were used in Delhi by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and in Bihar by Nitish Kumar, who built an unlikely alliance with his long-time bête noire Lalu Prasad, took his own message of good governance to the people, and returned to power with a landslide victory.(Read More)

UP: Woman who accused SP MLA of rape found dead in Sultanpur

UP elections 2017 - A 22-year-old woman, who had accused Samajwadi Party MLA Arun Verma of raping her along with some other youth in 2013, was found murdered near her house in Sultanpur, police said on Monday.

The body of the woman, who was missing since Saturday, was found on Sunday near a primary school in Jaisinghpur, they said. An FIR has been registered in this regard.

Police said the injury mark around her neck suggested that she was strangled to death. The body has been sent for postmortem to ascertain the cause of death.

The woman had alleged that the local MLA, who is also the SP's Sultanpur candidate for the February 27 polls, and some others had gang raped her in September 2013.(Read More)

Uttarakhand elections: Rahul Gandhi, Harish Rawat perform Ganga aarti

Uttarakhand elections 2017 - With just two days left for the Uttarakhand assembly polls and the state Congress striving hard to woo voters in the last leg of the election campaign, vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Chief Minister Harish Rawat took part in Ganga Aarti at Haridwar's Har Ki Pauri late night on Sunday.

Rahul also held a 75-km long road show and a Nukkad Sabha in the city.

A day before, tearing into Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'real' motives behind demonetisation, Rahul Gandhi branded the move as a tool to waive off loans worth crores taken by some 50 rich families, instead of an initiative against black money as the Prime Minister has projected.

"He claimed that black money is in Swiss bank accounts, and that he would bring the money back from Swiss banks. The Swiss government has given him the names of Swiss account holders. I want to ask Prime Minister Modi, why have you not revealed those names in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha? Why have you kept those thieves away from us?" Gandhi said while addressing a rally in Uttar Pradesh's Sitapur.(Read More)

UP Assembly polls 2017: Akhilesh to address rallies in Sambhal, Amroha

Elections 2017 - Kick starting the campaigning for the second phase of Uttar Pradesh elections, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav will on Sunday address two election rallies in Sambhal and Amroha.

With the second phase of the state elections just three days away, political parties are busy campaigning to gain majority.

Akhilesh and Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday jointly launched the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Congress alliance's Common Minimum Programme.


During the launch, Akhilesh attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying that their alliance has shaken the latter's confidence.

Akhilesh further slammed the prime minister saying that he only knows to do 'Mann Ki Baat' but not 'Kaam ki baat'.
"Several times people say 'Mann ki baat' but not 'Kaam ki baat'," said Akhilesh.

The second phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections will be held on February 15.

The first phase of the elections, which was held on Saturday, saw a voter turnout of 63 per cent.(Read More)

UP polls 2017: Maya's fortunes hinge on winning reserved seats from SP, BJP

UP elections 2017 - In many ways, Uttar Pradesh  2017 is not just a survival game for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) but also a matter of pride for party matriarch Mayawati. An indicator of whether Mayawati will become the next chief minister (CM) of UP depends on whether she can win in most of the 55 new reserved constituencies created after the delimitation exercise in the state in 2008. Before delimitation in 2008, UP had 89 reserved constituencies. Now there are 85. Furthermore, in the 30 constituencies that continued to be reserved post 2008, Mayawati would have to make big strides to reclaim the ground she ceded to the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

That may be hard, but not impossible. The BSP has not been able to recover from the effects of the 2008 delimitation exercise that not just reduced the number of reserved constituencies by four, but also made the new ones less concentrated with Dalits who form the party’s core voter base.

In 2012 assembly elections, in the 55 new reserved constituencies, the BSP managed to win just 11. Mayawati’s biggest challenge will be to uproot the SP from these new reserved constituencies. To do so, she may have to win most of 30 seats which the SP won in 2012 in the newly-created reserved assembly constituencies. What makes her job harder is that before she could make a mark on these newly-reserved constituencies, the BJP had already made rapid inroads into them.(Read More)