BJP plans WhatsApp-driven campaign with ‘cell phone pramukhs’ for 2019

The BJP is preparing an extensive WhatsApp-based campaign for the 2019 Lok Sabha election, built around a “cell phone pramukh” at each polling booth, according to two people familiar with the plan. Around 900,000 such workers, each given a smartphone, are to circulate campaign videos, audio clips, text, graphics and cartoons.

How the plan works

One of the sources said details of the campaign were presented to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several top BJP leaders roughly three weeks earlier by a senior PMO official.

Under a booth action plan drawn up by party president Amit Shah, state units have been asked to list voters with smartphones at every polling station. The party’s war room at its old headquarters on Ashoka Road in Delhi will then fold these lists into the programme. In the first round, office-bearers, MPs, MLAs and other elected representatives will pick the pramukhs, who will each set up three WhatsApp groups per polling station, with 256 members in each group, the maximum the platform allows.

A second leader said that where three groups were not possible, the nodal person would run at least one. The first source said the party believed the next election would be fought on WhatsApp and that the campaign would begin in January.

Scale and concerns

The 2014 Lok Sabha election, the first to see heavy use of social media in campaigning, was held at 927,533 polling stations; that number is expected to rise. India has 1.14 billion mobile connections and at least 200 million WhatsApp users. The Election Commission has voiced concern about fake news on the platform being used to influence elections, and the IT ministry has raised the issue in the context of mob violence and lynchings.

Sanjay Kumar, director of CSDS, short for Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, observed campaigns were clearly becoming more digital, but that calling the next poll a WhatsApp election would be an overstatement, as there was no evidence people relied only on WhatsApp for political news.

What happened next

The 2019 Lok Sabha election ran from 11 April to 19 May 2019. The BJP won 303 of 543 seats and Narendra Modi began a second term on 30 May 2019.

See also: Bharatiya Janata Party and election news.

Originally published on 29 September 2018. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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