West Bengal too has seen huge increase in COVID-19 cases in the whole of the first week of June<\/span><\/a> \u2013 2,686 new cases have been reported across the state \u2013 with 449 new cases reported in the last 24 hours.<\/p>\nUnder 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
According to senior Trinamool Congress leaders, the state government\u2019s handling of COVID-19 \u201cdespite non-cooperation from the Centre\u201d 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 \u201cpushed\u201d migrant workers from hotspots across the country into Bengal, without planning and increasing the number of cases in the state in the process.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cvirtual rally\u201d and is looking at this as a way of kickstarting the 2021 election campaign in the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not possible to organise rallies and mass gatherings, so we have taken to the virtual rally to bring people together on this platform,\u201d Ghosh said. The BJP plans to bring before the people the Trinamool Congress government\u2019s \u201cpoor performance\u201d 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In COVID-19 situation, political parties resort to “virtual rallies”. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":9712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99,57,378,246,346,49,46],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9711","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-amit-shah","9":"tag-bjp","10":"tag-containment-zones","11":"tag-coronavirus-in-india","12":"tag-coronavirus-in-kolkata","13":"tag-mamata-banerjee","14":"tag-trinamool-congress"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9711"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=9711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}