COVID-19 leads Trinamool Congress & BJP to organise “virtual” rallies and meetings ahead of Bengal Assembly polls 2021

With Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases increasing rapidly across the country, political parties are taking resort to “virtual rallies and meetings” to reach out to the electorate. Ahead of the Assembly polls in 2021 in West Bengal, the ruling party Trinamool Congress and the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party are both taking to the virtual route to increase the pitch of their poll campaigns.

The country has seen the highest single day COVID-19 count in the last 24 hours – which was reported to be 9,983. West Bengal too has seen huge increase in COVID-19 cases in the whole of the first week of June – 2,686 new cases have been reported across the state – with 449 new cases reported in the last 24 hours.

Under this backdrop, reaching out to the electorate through online campaigns seems to be the only option for political parties as social distancing is the order of the day and rallies and meetings on the roads are banned.

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee held a virtual meeting with party functionaries on June 5, telling senior leaders of the party how to reach out to people and help the poor in their respective areas taking all kinds of precautions. She is also learnt to have told the party leaders to make better use of social media and WhatsApp to reach out to people.

According to senior Trinamool Congress leaders, the state government’s handling of COVID-19 “despite non-cooperation from the Centre” will be highlight of the party in the campaigns to be taken up. One of the key points will be the way in which the Centre “pushed” migrant workers from hotspots across the country into Bengal, without planning and increasing the number of cases in the state in the process.

The BJP too is taking the virtual route, with a virtual rally scheduled on June 9 (Tuesday) with Union Home Minister Amit Shah. MP and BJP state president Dilip Ghosh will also be party of the “virtual rally” and is looking at this as a way of kickstarting the 2021 election campaign in the state.

“It is not possible to organise rallies and mass gatherings, so we have taken to the virtual rally to bring people together on this platform,” Ghosh said. The BJP plans to bring before the people the Trinamool Congress government’s “poor performance” in handling COVID-19 and the aftermath of Amphan cyclone. Over 1,000 virtual rallies are being planned by the party in the coming days.