THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Over the last several days, voters across the state were receiving calls on various schemes Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched.
The telecallers, appointed by the BJP, have been based in all the 14 districts but the state leadership has got no role in their functioning. The interesting factor is that the youths comprising from both the sexes are not attached to any political party.
They have been appointed six months back as social media has become a potent campaign tool, both for collecting information as well as customising and getting their message across. They directly report to the BJP IT cell at its headquarters in New Delhi.
B. L. Santhosh, the national joint organising secretary, has been coordinating their work.
One of the first things they did was to tabulate voters' list in Kerala. A BJP leader told DC that the youths, a majority of them professional degree holders and Malayalis, had been given a detailed list of close to 26 lakh beneficiaries of various central schemes.
“Not many people had come to know about the role of telecallers until now when voters started receiving calls from them. This is the first time a political party is into such a rigorous exercise in the run-up to Lok Sabha elections calling all the voters in the state. This is one area where the BJP is miles ahead of the Congress and CPM ,” he said.
The tele-callers were recruited by a recruiting agency based in New Delhi. They daily apprise the BJP IT cell at New Delhi of their progress. The RSS leadership had formed “Shakthi Kendras” where booth in-charge, as well as voter list page in-charges, are assigned to visit every single household. The page in-charge will be in touch with them on a day to day basis. So if callers are in touch with the voters over the phone, then the page in-charges would be directly liaising with them.
