Social media is now a major weapon in the battle of the elections. Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp played a crucial role in BJP’s win in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Aam Admi Party’s win in Delhi assembly elections and Nitish-Lalu’s success in Bihar assembly polls.
Congress on Social Media
The country’s oldest party, the Congress, has so far not shown any significant activity on this front. But the party is preparing to up their game through use of social media in the upcoming elections in Uttar Pradesh with the help of poll strategist Prashant Kishor.
PK’s War Room
The social media war is being fought through a room in Jopling Road in Lucknow where Prashant Kishor’s company I-PAC (Indian Political Action Committee) is located.
Twenty five members of Kishor’s core team work 24 hours to spread party’s message to as many people as possible. The team includes alumni from IIT, JNU, Delhi University, whose responsibilities are:
- Collecting data
- Research
- To decide party leader’s agenda in their speech
- To work on the election manifesto
- And to promote Congress’ activities like Rahul Gandhi’s visit to UP extensively on social media
Virtual World’s Fray
On 29 July, when the Congress launched its election campaign for the UP assembly polls with a massive meeting of party workers in Lucknow, Prashant Kishor’s team took over the social media department. Since then the Congress party has increasingly started making inroads in the virtual world of the Internet.
A senior member of Kishor’s I-PAC team told The Quint:
Our fight is with BJP on social media platform where we are currently performing better. While BJP’s page on Facebook saying ‘Uttar Dega Uttar Pradesh’ has around six lakh likes, Congress’ page ‘27 Saal, UP Behaal’ has seven lakh. On Facebook, our reach is one million and we aim to reach two million soon.
UPCC’s Twitter handle has around 14,000 followers so far. But according to I-PAC the strongest medium is Whatsapp. UPCC is involved with more than 1,500 Whatsapp groups and the messages are received by about 1.25 lakh people.
Zeeshan Haider who is trying to get Congress ticket from West Lucknow said,
The biggest advantage of Whatsapp is it can reach the rural hinterland. Whatsapp was extensively used to gather crowds during Rahul Gandhi’s Kisan Yatra.
In addition, Congress has a mobile app, which is currently available only on Android phones.
People’s Changing Behaviour
According to I-PAC team, social media is rapidly changing people’s attitudes. Initially Modi-Maya-Mulayam’s judgmental political comments got the most number. But now Rahul Gandhi’s party messages related to polls, campaign news are getting great results as well.
It doesn’t matter if political parties get praised or abused on Facebook or Twitter. The aim is to be actively discussed on social media.
The interesting fact is that during 2014 Lok Sabha elections Prashant Kishor was with the BJP. Even though he has changed parties, BJP’s social media influence remains strong. Hence, Congress and Kishor will face a tough competition in fighting the social media war.
A leader of UPCC during Indira Gandhi’s tenure told The Quint, “In a state like UP, where people struggle to receive basic amenities like electricity, infrastructure, etc., how much of a help will be social media?”
But recent results have shown that internet has proved to be more effective than handing over election manifestos manually or shouting on loudspeakers to spread the word. It seems the political parties have understood the immense value of social media.
(The article has been translated from the original by Shambhavi Prakash.)
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