In Varanasi, AAP’s door-to-door campaign is the key of winning

Varanasi : Dusk has begun to fall and a group of little urchins sporting saffron caps and wearing Narendra Modi masks play outside AAP’s central office here and hail BJP’s prime ministerial nominee with slogans they have picked up over the past few weeks.

Smiling wryly, an AAP member goes to them and offers some biscuits and bottles of soft drink. The kids happily accept the goodies, don the boat-shaped AAP white caps and begin slogan-shouting for Kejriwal. Considering the Herculean task of defeating Modi in what is termed a ‘Hindu city’, even though it has a large population of Muslims, the AAP is happy to recruit anyone in Varanasi that goes to the polls in less than a fortnight (May 12) from now.

But defeating Modi on a turf where the BJP has won five out of the six elections since 1991 will be a daunting challenge for Kejriwal who vanquished Delhi’s three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit in assembly elections in 2013 and went on to become a national figure.

“The fight against Modi is no doubt tough, but we will sail through,” said Gopal Mohan who is in-charge of party’s campaign in Varanasi.

With skeletal resources at their disposal, the AAP is heavily banking on it door-to-door campaign – one of its tried and tested poll strategies in Delhi assembly elections. The party stunned the entire nation by bagging 28 seats in a house of 70.

“Out of the 3.15 lakh households, we have reached 1.75 lakh,” Mohan told IANS at the party office, which issues directions to four other offices in the city. Mohan says that around 15,000 locals joined the party as volunteers and are engaged in door-to-door campaigns, the party’s forte.

In the two-storey office, the same faces, who burnt midnight oil at AAP’s office in Hanuman Road on Delhi, can be seen working with the same zeal to repeat the “success of Delhi”.

“We are going to those villages and the corners which politicians have not never visited. The response is fantastic,” Anand, a party member, told IANS.

Varanasi has five assembly segments and five leaders, including Kejriwal’s closest aide and former Delhi minister Manish Sisodia, have been looking after the campaigning work in these seats.

Many Varanasi residents, who IANS spoke to, seem to be fascinated with the Modi’s claimed Gujarat model of development which is BJP’s sellling point in the campaign. This suggests Kejriwal’s anti-corruption plank is yet to capture the imagination of some 1.6 million voters.