Hindustan Times (Delhi)

100K volunteers, 70 war rooms: Kejriwal’s AAP ready for big day

- Ht Correspond­ent htreporter­s@hindustant­imes.com

Delhi votes from 8am to 6pm. The task of the polling agents will be to check voter turnout and relay it to the war room. At least five mobilisers will be present at every booth, who will then have to bring voters out to the polling booths, if the turnout is found to be not good.

SENIOR PARTY LEADER

Sought blessings of Hanuman ji at famous Hanuman temple at CP. Bhagwan ji said - ’You are doing good work. Continue serving people like this. Leave the outcome to me, all will be fine.

ARVIND KEJRIWAL, on Twitter

NEWDELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has readied an army of nearly 100,000 volunteers to ensure a high voter turnout and keep an eye on any possible malpractic­e in electronic voting machines that will be used when Delhi goes to polls on Saturday.

The party, with the help of I-PAC, a firm that helps political parties with poll strategies, has set up 70 war rooms in every assembly constituen­cy and one central war room at Firoz Shah Road.

The party in a statement said it would deploy 67,815 “boothlevel mobilisers” across the Capital on Saturday to convince people to come out and vote.

Apart from this, 27,126 ‘boothlevel agents’ will be present across the total 13,563 booths in Delhi.

Each booth will have at least two agents from AAP to keep a tab on the voter turnout in every area.

“Delhi votes from 8am to 6pm. The task of the polling agents will be to check voter turnout from time to time and relay it to the war room. Whenever the turnout is found to be unfavourab­le compared to AAP’S support base in the area, the respective candidates and the constituen­cy mobilisers will be alerted. At least five mobilisers will be present at every booth, who will then have to bring voters out to the polling booths,” a senior party leader said.

The booth level agents have been trained to keep a tab on EVM operations and malpractic­es, if any, the leader said.

For its war rooms, the party has gathered an additional 1,400 volunteers who will be handling data collection and analysis.

Each of the 70 war rooms will have 20 members per assembly constituen­cy, which will be led by a ‘war room specialist’.

These teams will be responsibl­e for real-time assessment of voting trends and raising interventi­ons to the election commission. The assembly constituen­cy war rooms will be directly connected to the candidate’s team and the central state-level war room.

CM OFFERS PRAYERS

A day before the polls, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday paid obeisance at the famous

Hanuman temple in Connaught Place. He and his wife Sunita offered prayers at the temple on the Kharak Singh Marg.

After his visit to the temple, the chief minister said he prayed for the progress of the people of Delhi.

“Sought blessings of Hanuman ji at famous Hanuman temple at CP. Bhagwan ji said - ’You are doing good work. Continue serving people like this. Leave the outcome to me, all will be fine,” Kejriwal said in a tweet in Hindi.

 ?? SONU MEHTA/HT PHOTO ?? CM Arvind Kejriwal offers prayers at the Hanuman temple at Connaught Place Friday.
SONU MEHTA/HT PHOTO CM Arvind Kejriwal offers prayers at the Hanuman temple at Connaught Place Friday.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from India