New Delhi, Apr 21 (IANS): The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) "extravagant campaign" for the Delhi civic polls, in which it spent five times more than the Congress party, with focus on price rise and corruption, which had nothing to do with civic issues, swayed the people and helped it win the MCD polls, Congress sources said Friday.
"If you see the posters and hoardings in our campaign you will find our focus is on real issues. However, the BJP targeted the Congress on issues like price rise and 2G which had nothing to do with issues in MCD. But it clicked with the people," a Congress leader told IANS on condition of anonymity.
According to Congress leaders, while the party spent around Rs.4 crore in the campaign it was little in comparison to the BJP's spend of "over Rs.20 crore".
"If you see BJP's posters and hoardings you can find many grammatical mistakes. But despite our laying stress on women empowerment in the hoardings, we could not connect with the voters," another party leader, pleading anonymity, told IANS.
The BJP had campaigned on a massive scale using various means of communication, ranging from posters to hoardings and on facebook to mobile.
"Our campaign was low key and genuine, but people got convinced with the extravagant campaign of the BJP which did not mention Delhi's civic issues at all," said a party leader.
"The BJP had also launched a Vision Document 2025. It was irrelevant but it seems to have clicked with the people."
The BJP won in 138 of the 272 wards in the three newly-created municipal corporations of Delhi while the Congress secured victory in 78 wards. The BJP's tally was 26 seats lower than 2007 when it had won 164 seats, while the Congress tally went up from 64 to 78 seats.