Congress to lure youth with War Room'

Mumbai: You may get a call saying, “This is Ashok Chavan, chief of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee. Are you willing to join the Congress?”

With campaigning for the Lok Sabha polls gradually reaching its peak, the Congress has embarked on an ambitious drive to attract the youth and convince them to work for the party during the Lok Sabha polls.

At present, more than two lakh volunteers have been registered with the Maharashtra Congress and they will be reaching out to people with the party ideology, said party sources.

This has been enabled by the “War Room” of the Congress set up on the second floor of Tilak Bhavan in Dadar by Nagpur-based information technology and social media expert Abhijit Sapkal, nephew of late Congress leader, Shrikant Jichkar.

The war room has a well-equipped in-house production unit and a social media team. “We have recorded an automated voice message of state president Ashok Chavan, who talks with people asking them whether they would like to join the Congress. If a person wants to join, he can press digit one, else two. Those who give consent to work for the party at booth level, are contacted by the social media team. In this way, we are connected with volunteers and two lakh such volunteers are working across the state,” said Mr Sapkal.

“The poll campaign with a tagline ‘Laaj Kashi Watat Nahi’ was an in-house production,” said  Mr Sapkal.