Indian-Americans begin preparations to campaign for LS polls

Taking advantage of the latest info tech revolution, an unprecedented number of Indian- Americans are gearing up for active participation in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

A few of the Indian-Americans have already started campaigning to get a Lok Sabha ticket from various political parties - the BJP, the Congress and the Aam Admi Party. Given the initial response so far, there seems to be greater enthusiasm among the supporters of the BJP and AAP in the US.

The American chapters of both the political parties have already created an army of volunteers. While hundreds of them would travel to India during the election campaign period, several thousands of supporters of both these parties would call their friends and relatives back home to vote in favor of their candidates.

In an effort to boost their party base, both the Overseas Friends of BJP-USA and AAP-USA over the past one month have been holding a series of Google hangouts with their top leaders urging them expand their party base in the US, but also donate funds for election and launch phone campaigning.

"This is a historic election. We Indian Americans need to actively participate in the general elections," said Chandrakant Patel, president of OFBJP-USA. "Indian-Americans supporters of BJP and Narendra Modi would be campaigning through social media and phone calls, for which several thousands volunteers have come forward and their number is swelling every day," he said, adding hundreds of BJP supporters are planning to travel to India for the campaign.

"The voice of NRIs have a greater impact on the people," he said. AAP-USA leader Pran Kurup said his party was doing frequent Google hangouts with NRIs. AAP has in fact launched a dedicated website for the Indian diaspora. Encouraged by the success in Delhi assembly polls, the AAP supporters are planning to adopt Lok Sabha constituencies.

"Several volunteers' teams have been formed all across the world, including many cities in the US. These teams are self-running for the most part similar to AAP's Swaraj concept while they are still sufficiently coordinated to share the do's and don'ts from each other," he said.

The party is also using Google hangouts for fund raising campaigns. For instance in one hangout last month, it generated donations of over Rs 20 lakhs.