Lucknow, May 8 (IANS): While activities in all political parties have been halted due to the corona crisis and the ongoing lockdown, the BJP in Uttar Pradesh has started reaching out to its cadres through hi-tech communication tools, including audio bridge, interactive voice response (IVR) and video conferencing. The party is quietly preparing for the Panchayat elections in the state, which is likely to be held later this year.

The party's IT cell has created around 40,000 WhatsApp groups for rapid communication transmission, right down to the booth level workers.

According to state BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh, the idea is to keep the morale high.

"Our workers are well informed about the latest technology and we have no problem in communicating with the cadres. The idea behind creating 40,000 WhatsApp groups was to ensure that party decisions percolate to grassroots."

The BJP has already ensured that all the district offices are equipped with a video-conferencing facility. This helps the leadership in contacting party workers, giving instructions and implementing them on the ground.

The party is also working through audio bridge that allows multiple audio inputs to be mixed and sent to audio outputs.

"We are able to interact with around 20,000 party workers at a time. This is the first time that I am using the audio bridge to reach out to workers," he said.

The party also has a database of mobile numbers of all functionaries and uses IVR technology to allow workers to be in sync with party's core team.

The BJP is also using the lockdown period to prepare for the Panchayat elections, likely to be held later this year.

The BJP has nominated over 75,000 'election warriors' to ensure the party's victory in the polls.

The BJP has decided to nominate one convenor each for 60,000 village Panchayats and 15,000 block and district Panchayats. These convenors, called 'sanyojak', will function as the eyes and ears of the state leadership and will help in finalizing the party's poll strategy and will also suggest names of candidates.

This will be the first time in Uttar Pradesh that the BJP will contest the three-tier Panchayat elections under the party banner.

Sunil Bansal, state BJP organising secretary, said that to gear up the election machinery and activate booth level workers, the party has decided to appoint one election convenor for every seat at the village, block and district level.

He said that by the end of this month, the nomination process for all 60,000 village Panchayats would be finalised.

The party leadership is addressing booth level leaders through video-conferencing and aims at activating the party machinery for the Panchayat polls.