Aam Aadmi Party plans homely campaign

NEW DELHI: The AamAadmi Party does not have sufficient funds or space to carry out large scale advertising in Delhi. Therefore, it has turned to the aamaadmi to help them make their presence felt in the capital. From posters behind autos, the AAP is now looking to set up around two lakhhoardings across the city by the end of the month. The party's over 1.25 lakh volunteers will help in this exercise by purchasing these hoardings and then setting them up on their boundary walls and homes.

The party is also focusing on door-to-door campaigning and plans to visit each house in the city at least thrice before the elections. "Our visibility may be low but our focus is on people-to-people contact. Every person should have met their respective candidates at least once before the election," said a source.

"Most of the prime advertising space in the city has already been taken up by the current government which is advertising their achievements over the past 15 years. Secondly, we do not have the money to hire such places since we are dependent solely on donations. But where we lack on funds, we make up with our massive volunteer base. In the next 10 days or so, there will be at least one hoarding set up in homes of all our 1.25 lakh volunteers, especially in areas where candidates have been announced. We have got the posters and banners made and they will purchase these and set them up," said party chief Arvind Kejriwal.

Sources said the idea came after the party spent a lot of money on a big hoarding that they set up at Mandawali's Shri Ram Chowk in east Delhi. A few days later, it was pulled down since a Congress function was to be held there. "After that we requested some residents to put up our posters in their homes and they were more than happy to do so," said a source.

Several posters and hoardings are already visible in the city. Party sources claim that in Bawana, a few hundred banners and hoardings have already been put up. In Patparganj, around 200 have been sold to volunteers. "The bigger hoardings are being sponsored by the party but the smaller ones, which cost Rs 200 on an average, are being bought by the volunteers to be set up at their houses. Around 200 have already been put up and by the end of the month we are expecting 1,000 to be up," said Nitin Tyagi, an AAP volunteer.

We are seeing above how the AAP is going about campaigning with its limited resources.

They have chosen the "Broom" as its election symbol as they propose to cleanse the entire corrupt set up that has been installed by the Congress, BJP and other existing political parties.

It has to work this way because they have taken a conscious decision of not approaching businessmen to finance their campaign for it would then have to acquiesce to the favours asked by these businessmen later on quid pro quo.

Hence we are asking the common man to contribute, whatever is in his means.

If you live near or in Delhi, please join their election campaign.