To conquer the Uttar Pradesh polls, BJP has decided to go ahead via social media and associated youth power. Party chief Amit Shah would formally launch the party’s social media campaign on September 3 in Lucknow, the crux of which the BJP describes as ‘More Feet on the Street.’
The party has also opened the initiative to non-resident Indians (NRI), claiming a large number of professionals from all walks of life from abroad are willing to be associated with the UP campaign.
The social media savvy Prime Minister himself is seen as having had redefined the use of technology for political means: Narendra Modi has recently become the most followed person on Twitter in India. The BJP wants to repeat the same success in UP polls slated for 2017.
“Our strategy in Uttar Pradesh is to engage the youth online and the bring them to connect to voters on the actual field. We are in the process of forming an army of social media savvy volunteers who will then be connected to each other face-to-face during social media conclaves at several geographical levels. This way we shall bring our online support on to the streets,” said Amit Malviya, BJP’s national incharge of information and technology, and social media management.
Regarding NRI participation, Malviya told Mail Today that a large number of Indians from abroad are willing to take temporary breaks from their offices and professions to join UP campaign. “The highest number of NRIs willing to join us are from the US, then UK, Canada and Australia, and some also from Gulf countries.”
The Lucknow meet or ‘sammelan’ on September 3 is expected to attract a huge number of social media enthusiasts, from which the party would pick up a crack-force of 5,000 to wage the party’s wars in the polls. While Mail Today was the first to report this, sources added that this would be just the first of a series of such conclaves to be organised by the party at the level of individual assembly constituencies.
Malviya told Mail Today that the party has already conducted an in-depth study into the social media behavior of youths from UP. “We have factored-in a number of things in drafting a UP-specific plan. We have studied the way the youths are behaving on different social media platforms and opinion sites on the internet. We have also done a sentiment analysis and demographic profiling on the basis of what the youth are doing on the internet,” said Malviya.
The social media team of the party wants to take these volunteers to each Assembly segment and station them there, the party providing all the infrastructure and logistics.
Sourced from indiatoday.intoday.in, Featured image courtesy: mashable.com
