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Bhanu P Lohumi
Tribune News Service
Shimla, May 15
With campaigning coming to an end on May 17 for the four Lok Sabha seats in Himachal, rivals BJP and Congress have shifted focus to the social media, instructing booth coordinators to create WhatsApp groups at their level. “More than 7000 groups are already working in the state,” says Rajinder Sharma, who is managing Congress’ social media. “The NYAY yojana has received an overwhelming response,” he claims.
The BJP has deputed 1,46,000 panna pramukh (given a page of voters). “As many as 4,000 WhatsApp groups have been created at the panchayat level with a minimum 100 members in each group “ informs BJP’s IT cell head Chetan Bragta. The CM interacted with 25,000 booth workers through audio-conferencing on May 8 and answered their queries.
With war room teams of both parties constantly drawing and redrawing strategies, campaigning on the social media has become aggressive, bordering on the offensive. The BJP, which earlier ran a positive campaign on the Facebook talking about PM Modi’s development schemes and that of CM Jai Ram Thakur, has turned to Congress-bashing, ridiculing infighting in the rival’s camp.
The Congress is targeting the BJP on PM’s unkept promises such as hiking import duty on apple, tribal status to trans-Giri areas and 5% fruit juice in soft drinks to help orchardists.
The official page of the Himachal BJP on the Facebook has 211,578 ‘likes’ and 213,041 followers while that of the Congress has 64,579 ‘likes’ and 65, 329 followers. Rallies and messages of prominent leaders are being screened live. The parties are using GIF and cartoons to attract the voters, especially the youth, on Instagram. The Twitter handle is confined to urban areas.
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