Political symbolism matters and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s strategy team knows this.
After rocking the social media with PM’s Jhalmuri stall visit in Bengal’s Jhargram during the recent state Assembly election, the ruling BJP on Wednesday welcomed the visiting NDA leaders with a Jhalmuri serving.
As soon as NDA leaders — from TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu, LJP’s Chirag Paswan, HAL’s Jitan Majhi, JDU’s Nitish Kumar and others arrived at Bharat Mandapam for a meeting to mark the milestone of Modi surpassing Jawaharlal Nehru as India’s longest-serving PM, they were welcomed to a freshly laid-out Jhalmuri.
The images sent out a message of political grandstanding as the NDA allies savoured the popular Bengali snack amid an ongoing TMC implosion.
The PM was the first to partake and then the others followed.
Earlier on April 20, the PM’s visit to the Jhalmuri shop in Jhargram had clocked 100 million views on Instagram within 24 hours.
The video reached almost 90 million views and was still rising on Facebook, and on Google Search Traffic for ‘Jhalmuri’, it became the highest-ever searched item in 22 years.
The video captured the prime minister in a man-next-door moment with no grand stage inviting him, just pure connection.
Today’s video went a bit further as top politicians had a Jhalmuri moment.
