BHUBANESWAR: In this age of social media campaign and audio-visual publicity, age-old street play has not lost its relevance while wooing the masses is concerned. As the candidates have fallen back on the tried and trusted medium to drive home the point, the artists are making a quick buck.A city-based group - Sandhan Creations - has roped in artists to organise street plays. Its appeal has transcended political barriers as the group performs street plays for both BJD and its rival BJP. It has already staged more than 240 plays in different parts of the state during this election season.The artists suitably change outfits and scripts while promoting a particular political party. "We remain careful about the words we utter and slogans we deliver while campaigning for a political party. Any deviation can spoil the play and defeat the very purpose," said an artist."We get Rs 5,000 for a 30-45 minutes play. We normally stage four plays a day. We involve students of Utkal Sangeet Mahavidyalaya here and interested artists from other colleges for our performances," said Sandhan Creations' head Ramakant Pradhan.Six artists with two musicians are engaged for a play. The artists make the play interesting by suitably interspersing songs, dance, comedy and emotion to hold back the audience, said Pradhan.For BJD, he said, they normally highlight flagship schemes like Kalia. They also popularize the slogans of BJD like Hak Maguchi Odisha (Odisha asks for its rights).When they turn to saffron , the artists promote welfare programmes of the Centre and good works of Prime Minister Narendra Modi . They also pitch for local candidates and appeal people to vote him or her.Catchphrases change from Phir Ekbar Modi Sarkar (Modi government one more time) for BJP to Kalia Bharasa (Blessings of Kalia, a popular name for Lord Jagannath) for BJD.

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