Telangana Polls 2018: Political parties resort to call centres to reach voters

Hyderabad: Political parties in the city which had used recorded voice calls for campaigning have gone a step ahead and established call centres from where a person calls citizens and ask them to vote for the respective candidate, and ensure that their family members also voted for the same candidate.

Cutting across party lines, aspiring MLAs have hired agencies and are paying them 60 paisa per call. The call centre has to register the numbers of those it is calling. The payments will be made according to the number of calls. Besides calls, candidates have also been relying on conventional methods like text messages and non interactive voice calls (recorded calls).

This has been causing greater inconvenience to the citizens some of whom have been receiving dozens of calls. A voter said that the agencies were calling from new mobile numbers, which are not marked red in the Truecaller application. Therefore it is not easy to reject calls without answering them.

“When I was rushing to office I got a call from a random number which was neither marked red nor displayed as spam. When I received the call, a young woman after confirming my name asked me to vote for the BJP candidate from Secunderabad constituency. She also asked me to make sure that my family members would vote for the same candidate,” said Mr Maturi Pawan, resident of Kimtee Colony in Secunderabad, told this newspaper.

He said that as the day progressed, he received calls on behalf of all political parties and some candidates who were contesting as independents as well.

This newspaper learnt that calls were being made to voters living in all the 24 Assembly constituencies in Hyderabad distirct, and the number of such calls had increased from Sunday.

A candidate on condition of anonymity said that campaigning through voice calls would give them an opportunity to reach every voter at low cost. He said by spending about '20,000, aspiring candidates could reach every voter in the constituency.

He said that the package included non-interactive voice calls, person calling on behalf of the candidates and sending text messages.

When asked about the source of information, he said several agencies had the database of voters. The database has crucial information like gender, age, caste, religion and place of birth of every voter. He said private agencies would sell the information for up to Rs 10,000 based on demand. He said that based on the database provided, calls would be made individually.

Sources said that the data collected by the agencies who participated in door-to-door voter registration had been stored and sold to agencies for whopping amounts during the election season. Sources said that the data collected in these drives would be the most updated and relevant, sources said.