Jaipur:
After the success of cartoons lampooning the ruling Congress's role in the coal scam, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has now launched an all-out cartoon war. Today, demonstrating against the UPA's decision to allow Foreign Direct Investment or FDI in retail, a BJP worker on his scooter, carrying posters inspired from various internet and blogging sites was quite the centre of attraction.
BJP worker Mahendra Shastri from Jaipur's walled city area, set out to be part of the BJP's dharna at the city's Badi Chaupar. On his scooter were BJP flags and some interesting posters.
One of them, clearly a take on Pirates Of The Caribbean, showed Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh in lead roles. The caption read 'Dakuon Ki Rani Choron Ka Sardar.' It was obviously a poster made for the Hindi release of Pirates of the Caribbean 2 - the uncomplimentary reference to the Prime Minister and the Congress President didn't appear to have daunted the party worker in the least.
Speaking to NDTV, Mahendra Shastri said his aim was to protest and show people how the aam adami was at the receiving end of the UPA's unfair policies especially when it came to price rise.
Mr Shastri's second poster showed Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi lugging an LPG cylinder between them. Mrs Gandhi in an ordinary saree and Dr Singh in a striped black shirt were made to look like an ordinary middle class couple, burdened with the hike in LPG prices.
The state secretary of the BJP, Sunil Kothari, says he received such a tremendous response to the cartoons on coal that even after the protest was over they actually left the hoardings for a day at the site of the protest at Ambedkar Circle in Jaipur for people to stop and stare. Now they plan to take these cartoons and posters to districts units every time they stage a protest. Clearly, the BJP has discovered that communicating through cartoons is a more effective way of taking on the UPA than mundane political rhetoric.