Shah to kickstart Bihar campaign on Sunday with 'virtual rally' in Chhapra

While rest of the country grapples with a spike in Covid-19 infections and the economic fallout of the lockdown, Union Home Minister Amit Shah will launch the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s election campaign for the forthcoming Bihar Assembly polls on Sunday evening.
 

Shah will remotely address a public meeting in Bihar’s Saran, also known as Chhapra, district. Local BJP leaders have claimed to have set up over 360 projectors and television sets for people to watch Shah’s speech, which will be delivered from Delhi. It will also be available on the party's social media platforms.
 

Party workers have been asked to exhort people to turn up in good numbers at the locations of the projectors to watch Shah speak, but maintain social distancing norms.

This will be the first of the several “virtual rallies” the BJP has planned for its Bihar Assembly poll campaign. The polls are scheduled for October.
 

In the last few years, the BJP has experimented with technology during its election campaigning. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the party used Narendra Modi’s cutouts, with holographic effects, to reach out to more people.
 

On Thursday, at their first ‘virtual summit’, Australian PM Scott Morrison described Modi as a 'pioneer of technology in India', and brought up the use of technology in Modi’s 2014 campaign. “You were the one who started using holograms while campaigning many years ago,” Morrison told Modi.
 

Meanwhile, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is on a spree to lay foundation stones of and inaugurate public projects.
 

Kumar, whose Janata Dal (United) is an ally of the BJP in Bihar, inaugurated a 100-bed paediatric intensive care unit in Muzaffarpur on Saturday. He laid foundation stones of projects worth Rs 542.10 crore and inaugurated projects worth Rs 88.38 crore via videoconferencing on Saturday, a Bihar government press statement said.