Phonecall from a "preeti."Recorded voice says she is shocked her idol Kiran Bedi has joined BJP that harasses women on Feb 14. hmm, AAP?



— Vasudha Venugopal (@sanjivanibooty) January 25, 2015

Sir @AmitShahOffice got a recorded call from AAP telling me not to vote for Kiran Bedi as she is anti feminist & supporting ppl who..... 1/n



— Rita Gupta (@ritagupta74) January 25, 2015

Nilanjana Majumdar, a young professional in Delhi, received a phone call on the weekend from an unfamiliar woman who identified herself as Preeti. Speaking in Hindi, Preeti promptly launched into an impassioned tirade against Bharatiya Janata Party’s chief minister candidate Kiran Bedi. She said she was shocked that Bedi had joined a party that is known for its “anti-woman agenda”. It took a while for a startled Majumdar to realise that the voice on the other end was in fact recorded.For the last few days, similar automated phone calls targeting Bedi have been making the rounds in Delhi, which goes to polls in February.The latest messages are reminiscent of the anonymous calls that people received in the run-up to the 2013 Delhi Assembly elections. At the time, the messages were aimed at Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal, excoriating him for “betraying” the anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare.This time, people were quick to assume that the political robocalls were part of the Aam Aadmi Party’s campaign, particularly since Preeti asks people to vote for it towards the end of the pre-recorded call. Their suspicions were also grounded in the fact that Kejriwal has recently taken to making pointed barbs at Bedi, his former ally from the anti-corruption movement and now his main electoral rival . Even AAP’s poster campaign on auto rickshaws reflects who it thinks is its main challenger.

But AAP vehemently refuted the assumption, insisting that it is not behind the robocalls. “We have received reports from many people that such calls are doing the rounds but AAP is not targeting any individual in its campaign,” said AAP spokesperson Atishi Marlena. “We do use IVR [interactive voice response] calls for our campaigning but they are recorded in Arvind Kejriwal’s voice.”While the mystery of the robocalls is yet to be solved, there is no doubt that parties are cashing in on the surge of smartphones to reach out to individual voters. The AAP campaign, for instance, is being largely driven by volunteers making personal calls to the electorate.The AAP is something of a pioneer of direct calling in India, using the tool extensively in its past campaigns. During the 2013 Delhi Assembly elections and subsequently in the 2014 general polls, its volunteers in many parts of the world dialled the numbers provided by the party, trying to convince voters to choose the AAP over others.This time, to methodise volunteer participation, the party is running a live board with hourly updates on the frequency, number, origin and destination of the calls. Until Sunday evening, the board showed that close to 90,000 people in Delhi had been called, with over 2,000 calls going out every day.“Indian volunteers are making the most calls, but volunteers from around the world are also calling voters in Delhi to campaign for AAP," said Nishtha Sood, a member of AAP’s social media team. “The calls are proving to be an efficient way to secure votes and clear apprehensions about AAP.”The volunteers maintain that their campaign pitch is not “negative”. Their calls are aimed at convincing people about the positives of AAP’s 49-day stint in the capital. The robocalls targeting Bedi, they allege, are being used by other political parties in their name.For its part, the BJP had deftly used a missed calls-based campaign during the last general elections to get people to sign up as volunteers, who would then bring more people on board and campaign for the party. This time, though the party has shied away from cold calling, it has released radio ads where an old woman complains about the everyday problems she faces since she voted for Kejriwal in 2013.Meanwhile, the Congress, always slow to embrace technology, has not yet fully adopted direct calling. It is instead deploying 45 vans to campaign around Delhi. Which, in the end, might not be so bad, considering that many people are complaining about the intrusive nature of direct calls and robocalls. “The political parties are campaigning on television, radio, and on the streets,” said Sahil Sankhla, a college student. “But why disturb us on our phones?”