Delhi elections 2015: How Aam Aadmi Party volunteers outpaced RSS pracharaks

RSS workers say the campaign towards the end became very negative with most of it focussed only on criticism of Kejriwal.The BJP had no clear plans for the city, while voters had plenty of complaints about the BJP run MCD for delaying civic work. In contrast, AAP’s bijli, sadak, pani and wi-fi was more appealing to the electorate

RSS workers started working only a month before elections but by then, AAP volunteers had already built a relationship with most families. Every house in jhuggi jhopdis of New Delhi was visited at least four times by AAP party members in the last three months, while the RSS-BJP workers could barely manage two visits

New voters in slums were coaxed by AAP workers into voting. The RSS and BJP decided to give up on slums and focussed on unauthorised colonies. The promise that such colonies will be regularised soon did not really work with the voters who clearly wanted more

Presence of a high number of female AAP volunteers helped. RSS volunteers were all male and hence, unable to reach out to female voters. Also, AAP had night campaigns wherein they reached out to more people, unlike the early morning and late afternoon visits by sangh volunteers

RSS jan jagrans and voter awareness programmes were held in January by which minds of most voters were already made, thanks to the home visits and campaigns done by AAP from November

Street plays, night visits and simple promises related to local problems of an area made by AAP leaders appealed to voters more than the talks by RSS workers on “rashtranirman” (nation building)