Telangana: NRIs plan ‘smart’ contest during GHMC polls campaign
Hyderabad: A group of US-based Hyderabadis are out to help some of the smart contestants in their political campaign in the forthcoming GHMC polls.
The team, which did campaigns in US, Canada, and UK and also in India, laun-ched a website, www.myghmc.com through which and other multimedia modes, it plans to help candidates reach out to voters and influence them to select the best among the lot.
Political campaigns in India have always been about political parties and their leaders which the group plans to change and ensure smart, educated and civic minded individuals get elected.
“In the last 67 years, the process has failed to build strong leaders on local levels due to individual or family influences in the party. The entire political process is stacked up against smart, educated and civic-minded individuals. Many excellent and independent candidates are not able to contest unless the political bosses or power brokers bless them,” says Shukoor Ahmed, a Hyderabadi, entrepreneur and founder of V-Empower Inc, an IT company in US.
Other members of team are Maheshwar, a former colonel in the Indian Army, Elisha Pulivarti and Mohammed Altaf. The team wants to democratise the process and encourage honest and sincere individuals who have decent education, leadership and community involvement to contest the polls.
“We have enough expertise to help candidates put together a solid political campaign independently without being at the mercy of bigwigs in politics,” Mr Shukoor explained.
Asked how many candidates they plan to support and whether they would also extend monetary support to deserving candidates, he said that their focus was more on logistic support.
“We will provide free logistics, campaign ideas etc. If needed, we will help some of them. Our focus is more to reach out to voters and tell them that so and so candidate is better than others and give him a chance to serve them. We will scout for talent. It could be a dozen, 20 or more,” Mr Shukoor said. The team has collected data of 150 GHMC divisions, results of previous elections and would share them with the candidate they support.
Campaign message development, voter file and database management, focus on group facilitation, opinion polling, opposition research, social media and digital strategy, use of technology in campaigns and lastly fund raising will be provided by the team.
“Money plays key role in elections, but that’s not the only thing. There are instances where a good candidate won elections beating seasoned politicians. We have to send the right message to the voters,” he said
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