BJP’s SARAL app to target 60+ lakh party workers daily ahead of 2024 elections
Amit Malviya, National Head of Information and Technology at BJP, spoke about how the party is leveraging technology, including AI and chatbots, in preparation for general elections.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has ambitions of building the world’s largest political party, leveraging technology to reach out to the voters on the ground.
In the run-up to the 2024 general elections, the party is looking to reach out to dial-up nearly 60 lakh booth-level workers every single day through AI-calling and chatbots over its in-house ERP platform, SARAL across languages, said Amit Malviya, National Head of Information and Technology at BJP.
“We will manage a call centre of 30,000 people at the peak of the election, which is larger than any such operation in the world,” said Malviya, speaking at TechSparks 2023 in Delhi, India's most influential startup-tech summit.
He added that the calls are routed through AI and chatbots in different languages, and if it does not go through the AI channel, it switches over to the call centre.
“We have 30 TB of data, creating a data lake of sorts, and this has been collected over the last 10 elections. The number of attributes that we have collected and constantly keep mapping. These are beneficiaries of our government which is approximately 50 crore down to booth level with their address overall general profile. It is an ongoing activity,” said Malviya while talking about the depth of data collected by the app—which is available on the web, Android and iOS.
Calling SARAL the election-winning machine of the party, Malviya said that every karyakarta of BJP believes in being adept at using technology, social media and using technology to build local communities. “We do not win elections by fluke, we work really hard…,” said Malviya.
Apart from leveraging technology to campaign for elections, the party also trains its workers to use the SARAL app and technology efficiently. The app also aids in new member enrollment and connects nearly 10 lakh booths covering 18 crore primary members, 3 crore party workers spread across the country, and 30 lakh active party workers.
BJP has worked with multiple technology providers to innovate and create functionalities on the SARAL app. It has had partnerships ranging from startups to the Big Four.
“We, at the party, believe in free markets, capitalism, profits…we do pay market rates for the services startups provide us. But let me tell you, we are very tough taskmasters and our asks are very specific and very detailed,” said Malviya, adding that many larger firms and startups have not been able to deliver the required features at scale or speed demanded by the party.
He said that the promising growth in GDP of the country, rise in the middle-income class, and transition to a manufacturing hub in addition to a services economy is likely to work in favour of the party in the upcoming general election, along with its technology push.
(The copy was updated with a factual correction.)
Edited by Kanishk Singh