Mizoram Municipal Poll Candidates Campaigning Through SMS

Aizawl, Oct 27 : Refrained from door-to-door campaigning, candidates for the first Aizawl Municipal Council (AMC) elections are campaigning through interviews on local television networks and by sending text messages on mobile phones.

A diktat from the Mizoram People's Forum (MPF), a Presbyterian Church sponsored election watchdog, has forced political parties and candidates to refrain from door-to-door campaigning to take alternative routes to woo voters.

Candidates for the 18-ward AMC polls, to be held on November 3, are now declaring their manifesto on TV channels.

A candidate said that he has been using text messages to ask voters within his ward to vote for him as he was not allowed to personally meet them in their homes by the MPF.

The MPF has also fixed the number of banners and posters to be displayed by a candidate within his ward and also the number of copies of the pamphlets and appeals 'to cut down election expenditure'.

SMS service providers like Aizawl-based Mobcom are doing lucrative business with major political parties, especially the ruling Congress and the opposition Mizo National Front (MNF), paying for their service to reach the voters.

"We are sending around seven lakh SMS’s in a week now and we hope that it would be picking up soon," Remruata Varte of the Mobcom sms service said.