Ensuing poll season may open new avenue for youth thrown out of jobs

With elections round the corner political strategists are now hiring young talents in Tamil Nadu with language and public relation skills. Team members of Sunil Kanugalu working for AIADMK and Prashant Kishore led Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) working for DMK are slowly expanding their teams to face the 2021 polls.

Multiple sources working with Sunil and Kishore confirmed that the political strategy firms have recruited a few journalists who have recently lost their jobs in the media houses due to lockdown.

The strategy teams have also roped in team leads who are further outsourcing the sample survey works to district wise youngsters.

According to sources approximately around 300 private staff are now directly or indirectly involved in the pre-election works in Tamil Nadwwu and this number will be tripled by Pongal.

The field teams are now gearing up for the second phase of sample survey from all the assembly constituencies. While Kishore’s team has informed DMK leader of MK Stalin that the party would bag up to 180 seats with alliance based on the first survey report. The Sunil’s team had also taken a sample survey with special focus on delta region and southern Tamil Nadu. There also unconfirmed media reports that the ruling party is weak in Madurai, Trichy, Thanjavur, Sivagangagi and Ramanathapuram.

However, DT Next could not access the internal survey but sources confirmed that the survey has reached the eyes of the chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami.

Then sitting MLAs and party functionaries who are eyeing assembly seats next year have also started recruiting those with language and social media skills. The legislators who are were recently involved in the corona relief works have engaged professional photographers using drone photography during COVID lockdown. “The pictures and videos documented during the COVID relief will be used for the next year assembly campaign. Only a small portion of it is now released into the facebook and twitter accounts of party MLAs,” said a visual effects designer working for the DMK MLAs in Chennai.

Besides the party works, the young turks in the DMK and AIADMK had also designated professionals to ensure the branding of youth wing leaders like Udayanidhi Stalin and Theni MP OP Ravindranathan. OP Jayapradeep, the second son of Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam is also now expanding his base roping in party workers and outsiders who can generate digital campaign content for the ruling AIADMK.

The political parties in Tamil Nadu have less than seven months to build the campaign base camp. Till the days of late leaders like J Jayalalithaa and M Karunanidhi, it was party cadres and functionaries who handled election show, but now outsiders are appointed for election strategies and this is not a healthy sign for Tamil Nadu politics, opined Poonga Nagar Selvam of AIADMK north Chennai MGR Mandram.

“Charismatic leaders in the past never engaged professionals for building brand and running election campaigns but now things have changed,” he added.