'Ab Hoga Nyay': Congress Launches Slogan For Lok Sabha Polls Penned By Javed Akhtar

With just four days to go before polling for the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress party finally launched its publicity campaign on Sunday.

"Ab Hoga NYAY" will be the party's slogan, Congress publicity campaign panel chief Anand Sharma told reporters. He added that the campaign's theme song, which elaborates on the Ab Hoga NYAY catchphrase, has been penned by celebrated lyricist Javed Akhtar while the video campaign has been directed by award-winning Hindi film director Nikhil Advani.

The campaign builds on the Congress party's manifesto promises, key among them being minimum income guarantee or 'Nyuntam Aay Yojana' (NYAY) of Rs 72,000 per annum to 5 crores of India's poorest households, 33% reservation for women in government jobs, addressing joblessness and farmer distress, etc.

Sharma said that the campaign had been finalized after extensive deliberations with Congress president Rahul Gandhi, his sister and party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, members of the party core group and the publicity campaign committee. The campaign design was finalized by a team of professionals from Percept, digital media and media marketing companies Silver Push, DesignBoxed and Nixon.

Reportedly battling a severe funds crisis for the past five years, the Congress party has also decided to explore some unconventional means of disseminating it's campaign among the masses. For instance, Sharma said, that the party has hired a "few thousand container trucks" which will be decked up with the Ab Hoga NYAY billboards and flagged off for traversing across the country.

"Unlike the BJP which is plush with funds and has also used over Rs 4000 crores of exchequer money in the months preceding the imposition of the election code of conduct to publicize (prime minister) Narendra Modi, we have limited financial resources," Sharma told Outlook. He said, however, that despite the funds crisis the party is "confident that it's campaign will find support with the people of India because it has been designed after including issues that matter to every demographic section of the society".

In addition to the overarching Ab Hoga NYAY campaign, the party has also instructed all its state units to put out publicity material that caters to issues of importance in their respective states.