Congress, NCP to take on Modi through social media

Congress launches training camps, NCP hires consultants

The ruling Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Maharashtra, plan to focus on a social media campaign across the state to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance in the run up to the ensuing general elections.

Both parties, which are used to traditional campaigning strategies including public rallies, house to house padyatras, are currently finalising a comprehensive strategy for effective use of Facebook, Twitter and blogs in a serious bid to reach out to first time voters in particular.

This is crucial especially since Narendra Modi and the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance are concentrating on Maharashtra, which has 48 Lok Sabha seats, the second largest after Uttar Pradesh (80 seats).

During the 2009 elections, the Congress-NCP alliance had won 25 seats while three independents supported the United Progressive Alliance.

The Shiv Sena-BJP alliance, which had won 20 seats, is quite eager to take the advantage of anti-incumbency and also target the Congress-NCP over several scams including irrigation and coal.

Curiously, the Congress-NCP and Shiv Sena-BJP alliances are focusing on first time voters who are quite familiar with social media.

The Congress party has begun training of party leaders and members to play a pro-active role in the use of social media for taking up government programmes and initiatives and also counter the Shiv Sena-BJP combine’s alleged misinformation campaign.

State Congess spokesman Ratnakar Mahajan told Business Standard that parties like the Congress cannot afford to ignore traditional political mobilisation because it earns them permanent public support.

“However, considering the spread of social media among the new literate and elite class, that forum has also to be utilised with certain creativity. This is different from what Modi and his group is trying to do. They are trying to spread misinformation against the Congress on things that do not exist whereas the Congress wants to put facts before the younger voters so that they are able to differentiate between the two and are able to decide which way they will like to go,” he said.

On the other hand, NCP will set up special social media cell from booth to state level and air the party's views on current issues.  The party has already roped in Driving Minds Innovation, a company formed by former ZEE TV and Star Plus executives Nitin Vaidya and Abhijit Saxena to firm up the digital and social media strategy.

State NCP spokesman Nawab Malik said social media cannot be neglected in the current situation. “Booth to state level, social media cell will work hard to effectively put forward the viewpoints of the party and its leaders. Unlike TV and print media, views will not be doctored. The idea is to reach out to a large number of voters,” he noted.