Only a week ago, the Congress courted a controversy by putting up BJP's leader and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's, photo on its website. An erred tweet by the party's official twitter handle also left Sonia Gandhi red in face. Despite several goof-ups, the party's online team seems to have learnt no lesson.
The website on Sunday displayed the faux pas of the BJP leaders like Giriraj Kishore, "ills" of the Hindutva ideology and "danger" of Narendra Modi becoming PM than its own policies and leaders.
The home page displays Kishore's picture along with his controversial statement- "Those who oppose Narendra Modi have no place in India. They will have a place only in Pakistan."
Just next to it, the details of party's vice president Rahul Gandhi's visit to UP, MP and Rajasthan is given along with his photo which bears a caption: "The people of India had deflated the India shining balloon of NDA in 2004 and 2009, and this time they will deflate the balloon of "Gujarat Model' as well." The website also gives the links to the two interviews of Rahul - "India will not grow if a Hindu fights with Muslim or a Maharashtrian fights with a north Indian" and "Mr Modi has a strong predilection of crony capitalism and we must challenge on him."
Though the party has not yet declared Rahul as their PM nominee, but he is the face of every campaigns with negligible mention of his mother Sonia, and the former PM Manmohan Singh.
On other hand, the BJP website not only displays Modi, prominently but also gives significant space to the party president Rajnath Singh, and senior leader Lal Krishna Advani. There is no mention of Congress or their vice president.
Even congress leaders feel that the party's campaign is not up to the mark and lacks mass appeal. A senior leader said, "The party has done good work with regards to food security, RTI and RTE Act, but our leaders failed to take credit of them. Instead, they choose to launch scathing attack on Modi. At times, those comments have seem to have backfired creating sympathy wave for Modi."
Moreover, aggressive online and social media campaign of BJP with specific issues of corruption and inflation has created a buzz among urban youth that has in turned lowered the confidence of our leaders, feels a Cong leader. This is despite the fact that the party has hired a multi-national PR company Dentsu Taproot, that has spend Rs500 crore over online, media and ground campaigns.
"The party seems to have admitted their defeat. The lackluster campaigns which seek to project only Rahul Gandhi, who has done nothing significant may affect the poll outcomes," said a senior congress functionary, seeking anonymity. Some of the party leaders have now questioned the decision of choosing the agency, which insiders say was Rahul Gandhi's decision.
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