The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh is running a parallel election campaign on social media, giving heft to the BJP’s push to retain electoral dominance after losing power to Congress in Rajasthan just six months back. 

RSS is trying to shape the public mood against Congress in the virtual world while posting and circulating messages that appear to be ‘neutral’ but have a distinct political sub-text. A person in charge of a ‘prant’ level WhatsApp group shared the details with News18 of how this is being done.
 
“This time we don’t need a wave. We don’t need go all out to support BJP candidates as well. In fact we don’t need BJP at all for this,” the person running the group named ‘Prant Pracharak Toli’ said. He said that BJP supporters and leaders were strictly kept out of such groups.
 
“Since it’s our maiden venture, we’re trying to keep it very organised to see which content is running where, to zero-in on content that isn’t working, and to identify areas where we need to work extra hard,” said the person who wished to remain anonymous.

To this end, the RSS groups that work below ‘Prant’ level are code-marked with digits. The ‘Prant’ number is followed by a ‘Vibhag’ number followed by the code given to the local ‘Mahanagar’. These codes help the people running the groups fix a WhatsApp group’s geographical location.

Content on these groups, said the person involved, is created carefully keeping in mind that ‘BJP’ is not mentioned anywhere, in an attempt to appear ‘neutral’. All that these groups do is create doubt in the minds of voters against Congress and urge people not to opt for ‘NOTA’ when they go out to vote.