Bihar Assembly Polls 2015,Bihar Polls ,JD(U)-RJD-Congress plans to counter BJP's Mission 182 in Bihar,

JD(U)-RJD-Congress plans to counter BJP's Mission 182 in Bihar,Bihar Assembly Polls 2015,Bihar Poll , Bihar election,  BJP , Congress , Narendra Modi , Nitish Kumar , RJD, JD(U), Phir se Nitish, Mission 182, BJP's Mission 182

New Delhi: As Bihar prepares for a fierce political battle, the ‘grand alliance’ of the Janata Dal (United), the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress has launched an aggressive campaign to ensure that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) does not achieve its ‘Mission 182’.

Prashant Kishore, who earlier played a key role in crafting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s historic 2014 poll campaign, has now been hired by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar to spearhead the JD(U)’s poll campaign in the state. Leading a team of foot soldiers of the JD(U) and allied parties, Kishore is overseeing a campaign which relies heavily on door-to-door outreach, public advertisements through life-size banners, and promotional songs.

Here’s a look at the strategies of the JD(U)-RJD-Congress combine, which is considered to have a psychological upper hand in the elections, to keep the BJP and its alliance partner at bay:

Har Ghar Dastak

Launched on 2 July at different parts of the state, the simple door-to-door campaign, which involves no technology, aims to personally get in touch with 3 crore voters in 1 crore households.

To carry out this campaign, JD(U)-RJD workers have been divided into different groups and each group has been assigned a fixed number of houses on the commissionery, district, block, panchayat and village levels.

Armed with handbills highlighting the Nitish government’s achievements, the workers knock on doors and put four questions before the occupants of the house:

Continuing the attack on the Modi government for not releasing caste-based census data

With an aim to stop the BJP from eating into the votes of ‘backward castes’, leaders associated with the ‘grand alliance’ have been asked to keep attacking the dispensation at the centre for not releasing social base caste count caste count data in the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011. The backward castes constitute a sizeable chunk of the population in the state that is considered as a traditional vote bank of the JD(U)-RJD.

Campaign slogans and posters

The JD(U) featuring Nitish’s photo is dominating Bihar’s skyline carrying different messages above a common punchline ‘Phir Ek Baar Nitish Kumar’ (Nitish Kumar once more) to counter BJP’s BJP’s tagline ‘Is Baar Bhajpa Sarkar’. (This election, vote for a BJP government)

#AskNitish campaign

This is a public engagement initiative first introduced by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to bring people closer to their leaders. The campaign, which facilitates direct questions from people to the Bihar chief minister using the Twitter hashtag, is aimed at reaching out to youth on social media.

‘Phir Se, Phir Se; Phir Se Nitish’

The JD(U) has released its campaign song, featuring exuberant lyrics  and catchy tunes ‘ ‘Phir se ek baar ho, Bihar mein bahaar ho; phir se ek baar ho, Nitishe Kumar ho’ (Let there be prosperity in Bihar, let there be Nitish Kumar once more).

Written by Tanu Weds Manu lyricist Raj Shekhar, the song has been composed by Sneha Khanwalkar, who was the music director for films like ‘Oye Lucky Lucky Oye’ and ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’. 

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