‘India Shining’-hit BJP acts coy even as Cong laps up phrases and songs

The Congress’s success at getting the copyrights of the Oscar-winning “Jai Ho” signature tune from Slumdog Millionaire seems to have set the tone for a keen contest among various political parties in Rajasthan to grab catchy numbers and phrases which may be gainfully used during the upcoming election campaign.  

An upbeat state Congress, already sounding victorious after bagging the exclusive rights of AR Rahman’s award-winning number, is now on a collection spree of songs and phrases which go down well with the local issues and party ideology.

Other parties like BJP and BSP, though critical of Congress for its recent “Jai Ho gimmicks”, too have also got into the creative mode trying to identify those slogans which could click with the voters.

“Jai Ho’’ has already become a theme song and a popular way of greeting amongst the party workers and now we are in the process of identifying the area specific slogans and phrases which would strike the right chord with the voters during the campaign’’ says state Congress spokesperson Satyendra Raghav.

Raghav and other political leaders maintain that slogans like “Jai Jai Rajasthan”, “Naye Rajasthan ka Nirman” and  “Ab nahin jhukega Rajasthan, (which was a parody to state BJP’s ‘Ab nahin rukega Rajasthan’), are yet again set to reverberate in the desert state during the campaigning.

Those involved in strategising the campaign activities for various parties disclose that they were considering to hire services of lyricists and singers, who would be part of the campaigns in the state.

Congress has already sought the services of a Mumbai based lyricist and octogenarian singer Dhani Ram Chaudhry. Originally hailing from Rajasthan, the singer, popularly called Chacha Chaudhary, has penned songs praising Sonia and Congress. Though BJP and other parties are busy in drawing modalities of campaign, the recent move of Congress seeking copyrights of Jai Ho has forced them to criticise the move. “It seems Congress has learnt no lessons from its earlier acts when it used the Chak De phrase- yet another Bollywood lift- in Gujarat elections,’’ said state BSP president Dungar Ram Gaidar while criticizing use of Bollywood songs and phrases in campaigns. Though Gaidar and several of his supporters were heard promoting, once famous Chal Chal meri Hathi song during the Assembly elections. State BJP V-P Arun Chaturvedi said that BJP has zeroed in reality based catch phrases and slogans rather than Bollywood numbers or slogans. Apparently memories of 'india shining' phrase that failed to catch the vote bank is still fresh.

Aditya Kant/ DNA-Daily News & Analysis Source: 3D Syndication