It is 3.30 p.m. on Saturday and everyone inside the main room of 16 E, Ferozshah Road, is on edge. The voter turnout is less than expected.
Leaders inside room
At least four men, smartphones in their hands, are giving updates to AAP Delhi election in-charge Sanjay Singh and Prashant Kishor of I-PAC.
Mr. Kishor was roped in by the Aam Aadmi Party for the election campaign.
The bungalow, which has been allotted to an AAP MP, has doubled as the central “war room” for the party throughout the day.
“Why is the turnout low in GK1 and GK2? The rich are not coming out to vote?” one person asked an AAP volunteer over the phone.
Another person walked into the room to show on his phone that the turnout had touched 40%.
“Don’t worry about the turnout, it will touch 60% for sure,” another man assured the rest of the room.
One room in each Assembly
The party had set up 70 “war rooms” — one each for the 70 Assembly constituencies — for management of poll activities. The party had also deployed two “booth-level agents” per election booth, one inside and one outside the booth.
“They give us information if there is any issue, hourly turnout and also how many would have voted for us,” an I-PAC member said, adding: “If there are any problems such as less turnout in our strong polling booths, then we raise it to “booth-level mobilisers” [five per booth] and ask them to mobilise more people.”
Apart from the main room, the “war room” was divided into four teams.
In the main room, there was a large LCD screen that displayed excel sheets with details of all constituencies and two whiteboards.
One of the board had the names of 10 constituencies written on it and inputs like — Shalimar Bagh-opposition campaigning on booths, Okhla-RO not cooperating and Rohtas Nagar, Uttam Nagar had ‘intentional slow voting’.
