Rajasthan Assembly Elections 2018: Final blitz - BJP, Congress to roll out heavy artillery

Rajasthan is down to the last week of campaigning before it goes to polls on December 7. Both major political parties —Congress and BJP — have drawn out elaborate last-week campaign strategies to reach out to as many voters as possible. The two are sparing no effort to make the most of the ever-decreasing timespan at their disposal.

The ruling BJP has worked out a double-pronged strategy to reach out to maximum voters. "We will unleash a double-pronged campaign. One, our leaders, including PM Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Vasundhara Raje, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari and chief ministers of states where polling is over, namely Shivraj Chauhan and Raman Singh, will address large and small rallies. Two, our workers will go door to door and to target groups of voters explaining what the BJP has promised them in its manifesto," said BJP general secretary P Muralidhar Rao. "We will focus on united BJP Vs divided Congress," he added.

As for the Congress, it has worked out a three-tier campaign plan that would be monitored from a control room in Jaipur, which is manned by senior leaders. "We would be carpet bombing with around 1,000 rallies organised for leaders, categorised in three tiers; firstly national leaders including Rahul Gandhi, secondly state leaders and thirdly ground level workers. Further, the control room to monitor the last phase of canvassing and proactively create contingency plans to deal with any situation would function at Jaipur under leaders like Ahmad Patel and Mukul Wasnik. I too would be part of this control room," party's Rajasthan in-charge Avinash Pandey told DNA.

It wouldn't be incorrect to say that Rajasthan has been in poll mode for over a year, but it seems the parties don't want to leave anything to chance in the last week of electioneering.

While Congress seeks to form a government, the BJP has much more hard a task: to change poll history.