A robot is seen distributing pamphlets to the people during a campaign by BJP.
The BJP's ongoing election campaign in Gujarat has just taken a tech leap!
In line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dream of a 'Digital India', a digital robot technology has been adopted in the BJP's campaign for its candidate for Nadiad Assembly constituency, Pankajbhai Desai.
Polling for the Gujarat legislative assembly will be held in two phases on December 1 and 5. The counting of votes will take place along with that of Himachal Pradesh on December 8.
The filing of nomination papers for both phases of the Gujarat polls is over and the candidates, across party lines, have hit the road with folded hands and smiling faces to win the voters' confidence.
While candidates are literally pulling out all stops to outdo the other in wooing voters, the BJP's Nadiad candidate in Kheda district has taken campaigning to a whole new level by a deploying a robot.
The use of the digital robot technology has sparked off a buzz around Mr Desai's election campaign. While there's no guarantee that every voter in the Nadiad Assembly segment will vote for the BJP candidate, they are all taking excitedly about his new and innovative campaign.
While its safe to say that the BJP has jumped onto the digital bandwagon with regard to campaigning for the ensuing Gujarat polls, the use of a robot marks its Nadiad campaign the first of its kind in the country.
Harshil Patel, the head of the BJP's IT cell in Nadiad district and a member of the team promoting digital robots, told ANI, "We are currently promoting a high-tech concept through this robot. Since 2014, when Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister, the 'Digital India' initiative has taken off in earnest and this is our way of doing something new in 'Digital India'."
Elaborating further on this innovative concept, Mr Patel added, "We are using a special technique in this robot developed by Dhruv Pandit. We are handing out pamphlets to voters with the help of the digital robot. Campaign slogans have also been programmed into it, making it capable of conducting a full-fleged and high-tech digital election campaign."
On his unique election campaign, Mr Desai said, "The head of our IT cell, Harsilbhai has created this robot with his team. It is working well and is helping spread our agenda. Details of all the work that I accomplished as a MLA has also been fed into this robot and is being propagated through a speaker installed in it. Our robot has become the talk of the town."
The PM has been agressively pushing his vision of a 'Digital India' in the recent past and several policies, most notably the focus on switching to a digital currency, have been framed to take it forward.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)