Around 56km away from Kalpetta, the capital of Kerala's Wayanad district, a war room is functioning like a well-oiled machine at Mukkom, a tiny town in Kozhikode district. A makeshift office at the junction is the brain that steers the election campaigning of Congress president and UDF candidate Rahul Gandhi in Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency.
Five years after the Congress suffered its worst defeat in the Lok Sabha polls in 2014, the round-the-clock office at Mukkom is a clear example that the grand old party has undoubtedly realised the potential of new-age campaigning and its impact on a changed electorate.
Coordinated by senior Congress leader K P Anilkumar, the Congress' Wayanad war room has a group of committed professionals, including seasoned journalists, strategists and tech-savvy youngsters.
At least four televisions function there 24x7, with the team grasping news and views that matter in the polls. Interestingly, the channels being showed on the screens were mostly the so-called anti-Congress ones.
The 18-member think-tank that runs the war room has five journalists, two data analysts, two video editors, two graphic designers, one content writer and several volunteers.
The main task of the war room is to track smear campaign by rival parties and come up with counter arguments. “We follow each news that comes in support of and against us in various media. Then we identify those that need a reply or a counter argument. In certain cases, the counter arguments should come from senior leaders. In such cases, we take up the matter to the leaders concerned and facilitate their replies,” Anilkumar told Onmanorama.
Positive campaigning
The team is committed to the core to ensure that the campaigning goes on a positive note. “We focus to spread the reasons that prompted Rahul to pick Wayanad as a second seat. It's necessary especially since both the BJP and the Left parties run a highly negative campaigning about Rahul contesting from Wayanad,” Niyas Bharathi, a former Youth Congress functionary who is part of the team, said.
“The Left and the BJP have been projecting Amethi (where Rahul has been MP since 2004) as an underdeveloped constituency. We counter this argument by highlighting the development of Amethi,” he said.
Both Anilkumar and Niyas said the stress was on social media campaigning. The war room doles out timely social media posts and videos and spread them through WhatsApp groups and social media platforms of party workers and sympathisers. Each post is published after getting approval from senior party functionaries, Niyas said.
The war room also prepares trolls, but it is ensured that they don't hit anyone below the belt.
The war room is very much realistic when it comes to campaigning on the ground. Volunteers assigned by the war room assess campaigning at each booth and report to the think-tank who in turn devise strategies to strengthen electioneering in booths where it's weak.
The digital cell of the war room has prepared two exclusive websites highlighting the failures of the Modi government. They are awaiting approval to be publicised.
Countering agri argument
Ever since Rahul declared his candidature in Wayanad, the Left parties have launched an aggressive campaign against him accusing him and his Congress party of the crisis in the agrarian sector in Wayanad district. The Congress war room challenges this arguments by producing a series of short videos in which farmers and daily wagers expressing their confidence in Rahul.
Brand Rahul
Senior journalist Vinod Mathew, who heads Rahul Gandhi's media cell in Wayanad, said the campaign was all about building brand Rahul and brand Wayanad,” he said.
