The Congress party’s strategy to counter turncoat BJP candidates as ‘traitor’, ‘bikau’ failed to catch voters’ fancy in the by-elections. Another election strategy to use social media as an only important tool also failed. The Congress was hopeful that the strategy formed by the former chief minister Kamal Nath will work in the by-election as was done in the assembly election of 2018. The Congress party had activated its social media section to attack BJP leader Jyotiraditya Scindia and his supporters who had toppled the Kamal Nath government in the month of March.
Short videos were prepared in which works of Nath were highlighted and at the end it was asked, “What was my fault?” The party had also tried to spread the issue of ‘traitor’ and ‘bikau’ to the 16 turncoats of Gwalior Chambal region. In early days of election campaigning, the slogans gained momentum, but as the days passed the slogans disappeared. This only happened when the RSS and the BJP workers started their work in the constituencies.
The effect of social media and slogans boomeranged when Scindia and chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan started calling Nath and former chief minister Digvijaya Singh as the ones who betrayed Madhya Pradesh. CM Chouhan also stated that Nath is an outsider and asked him to respect people of MP. CM and Scindia took public meetings and visited each constituency for at least two times. On the other hand, the Congress failed to touch the ground. From the Congress party, Nath was only leader who was holding all the responsibility of the election.
