assembly-elections

Updated: Dec 21, 2019 06:26 IST

‘Acchhe beete paanch saal, lage raho Kejriwal’ (the last five years went well, keep going Kejriwal) will be the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) new campaign mantra for the Delhi assembly elections, likely to be held early next year, the party announced on Friday.

The party has also chosen a new colour scheme for its posters and pamphlets, with election strategist Prashant Kishor’s agency I-PAC helping the AAP in designing and implementing its poll campaign.

The area around the AAP head office in central Delhi’s Deen Dayal Upadhyay road, from where senior party leaders launched the new campaign on Friday, was dotted with fresh posters having a darker background — a departure from the conventional white and blue used by the party.

The AAP had officially kickstarted its poll campaign in July, weeks after the Lok Sabha elections in which the Bharatiya Janata Party won all seven seats in Delhi and the AAP was pushed to third position in terms of vote share by the Congress.

So far this year, the party had used campaign slogans such as ‘Phir Ek Baar Kejriwal’ (Kejriwal once again) and ‘I Love Kejriwal’. The latter gained prominent visibility behind thousands of auto-rickshaw hoods.

The party’s poll slogan in the 2015 elections, when it won 67 of the 70 seats, was ‘Paanch saal Kejriwal’ (Kejriwal for five years).

Several senior party functionaries defined the latest campaign theme - including both the new slogan and the visual aesthetics - as a “creative product” of Kishor’s I-PAC to endorse the party’s appeal among Delhi’s voters.

Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said, Kejriwal will release a “report card” on December 24, highlighting AAP government’s achievements in the last five years.

In the next phase, between December 25 and January 7, AAP volunteers will distribute the copies of the report card by visiting 3.5 million households across the city. Also, senior party leaders will address seven town hall meetings and party MLAs will hold 700 ‘mohalla sabhas’, said the AAP’s Delhi convener Gopal Rai.

He further said, marches in all 70 assembly segments in the city will also be organised on December 21 and 22. “Currently, the party is in its fourth phase poll campaign. From December 24, the campaign will intensify,” said Rai.

In the AAP’s campaign, Kishor’s agency is expected to have major role in visual and radio advertisements, use of social media and designing campaigns that endorse Kejriwal’s personal connection with residents in the city, said a senior AAP leader present at Friday’s event.

“We needed to bring a fresh one at this point to keep the enthusiasm alive. The new colour theme adds to the appeal,” said senior AAP leader and Delhi’s social welfare minister Rajendra Pal Gautam, who was present in the event.

Kishor had earlier conceptualised and implemented campaigns such as “Chai pe Charcha” for Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the 2014 general elections, “Coffee with Captain” for Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh to woo young voters ahead of assembly polls in the state in 2017 and “Har Ghar Dastak”, a door-to-door campaign in which Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar himself participated before the assembly polls in his state in 2015.