Inside the IT room, a call centre is also being run apart from people working to upload and circulate the content. Close to 10,000 volunteers are working in different assembly seats, including the state capital.

“We can make any topic trend with just a click. Even if our volunteers or workers start tweeting about a particular issue, we can be featured on the trend list. Our work here is to monitor and circulate accurate content at the grassroots,” said a senior IT professional associated with the BJP for two decades now.

The Uttar Pradesh BJP has two WhatsApp groups on each booth. There are 1,83,000 booths in the state, which means there are 3,66,000 WhatsApp groups working at the ground level to circulate messages and agendas.

Apart from IT professionals, developers, designers, video editors, programmers and content writers have also been hired to make the digital game strong. The IT team of the UP BJP has drafted and sent a proposal to Delhi, which now awaits an approval from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The draft presents how virtual rallies will look like. It shows how a link of the virtual rally of Prime Minister Modi will be sent to end users and how the screen deployed at the grassroots will look like. Only PM Modi and some chosen speakers will be seen on the screen.

While the BJP knows the power of the social media, the Uttar Pradesh Congress is also not leaving any stone unturned.

“We have been preparing for two years to go virtual. Given the Covid restrictions in place, we were already prepared to meet any contingency,” said Abhay Pandey, head of the UP Congress IT cell.

The social media war room in the UP Congress has hundreds of people, who relate to the ideology of the Congress. The war room of the political party is where it launches attacks on opposition parties, makes memes, designs online campaigns along with the task of taking the message of the high command to the public.