General elections: Rajasthan's NUZP relying on traditional media to promote agenda

JAIPUR: At a time when parties are feverishly promoting their manifestos at large press conferences, on social media, at public meetings, rallies, and through star campaigners, a newly-formed party in Rajasthan has decided to do things differently: focus on ‘traditional’ media to promote its agenda.

For nearly a fortnight now, the desert state’s prominent Hindi newspapers have been flooded with advertisements carrying excerpts serially from the 130 point-manifesto of the National Unionist Zamindara Party ( NUZP) and appeals of its three party candidates—contesting from Jaipur, Sriganganagar and Bikaner —to the electorate.

While all the other parties are aggressively organising public meetings, doing door-to-door visits, star campaigners’ rallies, etc., the party founded by famous guar gum trader BD Agarwal has almost exclusively focused its campaign on newspaper advertisements, with the mandatory public outreach limited to candidates doing personalized meetings with their constituents.

The party, which has the telephone as its official symbol, has been rather conservative in its campaign style.

Speaking to ET about this unusual strategy, Agarwal said, “Our party was established only in September last year, so we want people to be aware of our party’s agenda, proposals and policies which we will push for. Now, if we published the entire agenda on a single day, nobody will read it. So we thought we will serialise it. This (placing advertisements in newspapers) was done during assembly elections, too, and we got good public response.

“No other party has done their campaign and public outreach this way. Besides, through placing print ads, we are able to send our message to the people directly. So we chose this method,” he added.