The JNU election campaigns are in full swing and one of the "parties" standing for the election, BAPSA or the Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students Association seem to be doing a whole new take on their politics. They are not giving lengthy speeches or yelli'ng out slogans from rooftops. Well, they are doing that too but they have also found a new way to grab attention - comedy. No, not stand up, they are getting their word across through funny posters.

And who do they find to design these posters, the same man who was behind all those Ravi Verma painting comics called the Inedible India, that went viral a few months ago? Just to brush your memory, Inedible India is a comic that uses Raja Ravi Verma and Mughal paintings as comic strips that take on socio-political issues in the country. After the first few comics went viral, the author, Rajesh Rajamani decided to make the comic a regular feature on his Facebook page that currently has around 50,000 followers.

Laugh gigs: The idea is to combine criticism of other parties along with a tinge of sarcasm

Rajamani deals with casteism and sexism in his comics, so when members of the BAPSA came to him he was more than happy to help them out with their posters. "Since my ideologies are similar to that of BAPSA, I was already friends with a few of the members of BAPSA, so a mutual friend put the members in touch with me. I spoke to two of them to get an idea as to what they expected," Rajamani said.

Besides the comics and the occasional meme, Rajamani had never designed posters before so he was a little apprehensive at the beginning but since he didn't have difficulty in understanding what the BAPSA team wanted, it became easier to come up with ideas. "The team told me that they wanted the poster to represent the fact that they stand up for the marginalised and the oppressed, which is true but it could also get boring to see an essay on a poster, so I decided it should be funny. I wanted to combine criticism of other parties along with a tinge of sarcasm."

Idea talk: The party wants the poster to represent the fact that they stand up for the marginalised and the oppressed

Since BAPSA is fighting both the right and the left, Rajamani came up with amusing ways to point the JNU students in the BAPSA direction. "Basically in the posters I have pointed out that there is the Brahmanical hegemony in both the right and the left. So in the posters, I tried to play with the symbols of both the left and the right, things like the 'naamam' turning into a sickle to show that both sides are the same. Then in another poster, I point out how saffron (right) is naturally red (left)."