It was a surprise press conference on the last day of campaigning by then chief minister Ashok Gehlot. No one knew the agenda till Gehlot unveiled an announcement that his ‘7 Guarantees’ campaign had seen 1 crore families sign up for it.
Behind that announcement at the Congress office was an election campaign consultancy called ‘Designboxed’, which had worked on the campaign, and a giant flex was brought out to showcase the ‘milestone’. The firm had designed the Congress campaign, complete with ‘guarantee camps’ and bright hoardings with Gehlot’s face across the state. But all of that fell short when the results came out.
The BJP, on the other hand, had gone much the old-school way, depending on its spokespersons and the karyakartas on the ground to develop its narrative against the Gehlot government. It was a fight between what the BJP now describes as a ‘corporate-style’ campaign in the Congress camp where a lot of money was spent, and a worker-driven campaign in the BJP camp that started in 2019.
“The Congress outsourced its campaign… it was more about personality-building and relying on a private entity to build a corporate-style campaign. We fought it the good old way – by depending on our workers,” says BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla who worked for the party in Rajasthan. He told News18 that the BJP began its preparations in 2019 when crimes against women started being reported with unfailing regularity in Rajasthan.
What the BJP did
The BJP chose to speak to its workers on the ground to get feedback on what issues were affecting the people. The issue of paper leaks, crimes against women and the red diary, highlighting corruption, came up dominantly and the BJP spokespersons were told to drum these up. The BJP realised that the local media was not very supportive but the party’s leaders stayed on this.
“Slowly, we realised that our message was getting across to the people despite the Designboxed type of headlines and narrative that ‘all was well’. There was consistent and persistent work to get our message to the common man. Ultimately, no matter what Gehlot or Designboxed did, the narrative stuck – that their government was youth virodhi as well as mahila virodhi,” BJP’s Shehzad Poonawalla says.
The BJP’s ally remained its worker on the ground who kept giving inputs to the state and the central teams, which in turn kept pushing the same to the media. The party stationed its proficient voices like Rajya Sabha MP Sudhanshu Trivedi, former Uttar Pradesh minister Shrikant Sharma, and Shehzad Poonawalla in Rajasthan to escalate its message. The Congress, too, sent in its top spokespersons to Rajasthan, but it wasn’t as effective as the BJP.
The decisive push came from PM Narendra Modi who took the campaign to the next level and articulated the issues of paper leaks and crimes against women, which amplified the message and ensured its penetration across the state. The PM’s confidence showed when he said that Gehlot would never be the Chief Minister of Rajasthan again. The result was a comfortable majority of 115 seats for the BJP, reflecting the ground sentiment.
‘Designboxed’ had also worked on the Karnataka campaign with DK Shivakumar and the Congress had secured a big victory there based on the ‘guarantees’ that the Congress offered. But the same did not work in Rajasthan.
The Congress election strategy left a lot to be desired. Jodhpur and Jaipur districts were the ones where the party’s campaign managers focused a lot on, as the latter was Ashok Gehlot’s stronghold and was splattered with hoardings and banners. But Congress lost eight out of 10 seats in Jodhpur, and Gehlot fell behind in his polling booth. He managed to win Sardarpura seat, but his win margin was halved. Jaipur district also saw serious reverses for the Congress.
Overall, Congress repeated 98 MLAs but 65% of them lost — 17 out of 26 ministers out in the contest also lost.
Some in Congress say the fact that the party could still get 69 seats with a 39.5% vote share meant all was not lost, unlike in 2013 when Congress dropped to 21 seats. But there are no moral victories in politics.
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