No recession in Congress: Hiring 50 for war room

NEW DELHI: The country may be in the grips of a severe slowdown and the job market tepid, but Congress is hiring. As election fever heats up, the Grand Old Party is out there in the market, looking to hire at least 40-50 people adept in media and messaging to man its ‘war room’ located at 15 Gurudwara Rakabganj Road in Delhi.

“The party is looking to hire staff just for the elections. People who are familiar with technology and politics, journalists, techies and researchers to keep up with not just old media, but also new media platforms,” said one Congress office bearer.

The job description: researching parliamentary constituencies, issues occupying voters’ minds and closely monitoring what is going viral on the internet.

The war room, traditionally a military descriptor for a secure room where battle strategies are discussed and so called in the Congress context because it was the site of several strategy sessions during the last general elections, is also undergoing a makeover, with corporate style office space being created to accommodate the new recruits.

Deepender Hooda, Congress MP from Haryana, has been deputed by AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi to oversee the exercise, although senior leaders such as Ahmed Patel, AK Antony, Digvijaya Singh, and Jairam Ramesh will be actively involved in the strategy sessions.

The tendering process for technology upgrades at the war room has been initiated. I&B minister Manish Tewari confirmed that technology upgradation was underway, but played down talk that the party had set aside a sum of Rs 100 crore for the exercise. Congress, which has lagged behind the BJP in leveraging social media for electoral impact in the past, is getting help from experts.