After the Left Front, Congress and the Trinamool Congress it is the turn of the BJP to truncate the size of its rallies.
Amid criticisms that its leaders were more interested in winning elections than preserving the lives and health of the people who were giving them votes, the saffron party on Monday declared that the it would no longer organise big rallies and that all the rallies would be truncated to a size of 500 people to the maximum. This announcement would apply for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rallies too the party has said adding that it would use its “massive digital footprint” for campaigning where the message of the top leaders would be taken to the people through digital meetings.
BJP's IT wing chief Amit Malviya said that his party would use its “massive digital footprint” to take the message of the Prime Minister and other leaders to the people. “We did that successfully during Bihar elections… The opposition had then complained that it gave us an edge,” he maintained. Bengal has three more phases left for voting.
While the Trinamool Congress had been asking to combine the three phases into one a request the Election Commission turned down in the interest of what it called free and fair elections. Considering the fierceness of violence during the earlier phases of polls the ECI needs about 3 lakh central forces --- it has ruled out using State police --- which is not possible for the poll panel to procure, sources in the Commission said.
The BJP too had opined against clubbing the election phases while Pradesh Congress president Adhir Chowdhury went to the extent of requesting withholding of the polls for the time being till the situation improved.
The CPI(M) was the first party to declare holding of small rallies and street-corner meetings followed by the Congress. Its leader Rahul Gandhi has already cancelled his rallies in Bengal. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has also said that her party would organise small meetings in Kolkata.
Saying that hence forward it would hold public meetings in open places in accordance with pandemic guidelines BJP leader Jayprakash Majumdar said that apart from holding small rallies his party would distribute six crore masks and sanitisers in the state.