The Congress in Uttar Pradesh, apart from setting its organisation in order, has also started increasing its online presence.
The Congress in Uttar Pradesh, apart from setting its organisation in order, has also started increasing its online presence.
The party will now battle its political rivals on the social media too.
The UP Congress, this week, is setting up a Facebook and Twitter enrolment desk at the party headquarters in Lucknow to enrol its workers and leaders on social networking sites.
The move aims at countering the BJP campaign against the Congress and discrediting its leaders.
According to the party’s social media cell in-charge Shiv Pandey, “The party wants to use the social media platform to spread Congress ideology, create an online campaign for the party ahead of the assembly elections, and, most importantly, counter the misinformation that is being perpetuated by the BJP in the online space. However, we will make sure that the Congress campaign remains civil and polite, not abusive like some other parties”.
The core team of the UP Congress for the social media cell has about 23 members and they will be assisted by 150 more members in district and city units.
The Congress has also enlisted the support of over 1,300 social media soldiers who are not primary members of the Congress party but believe in the party ideology.
They will help in building online support for the Congress.
Mr Shiv Pandey said that in 2014, the BJP tried to pass of farm lands in Iran, and roads in China as Gujarat, and in the name of the Gujarat model.
“This kind of misinformation is what our social media initiative wants to stay alert to, so that we can expose them, tweet for tweet, and picture for picture”, he said.
The Congress social media cell officials said they also plan to set up camps at party events and rallies to enlist its cadres and strengthen the party’s presence in the virtual world. Training camps and guidelines for social media members is also on the cards.
Party sources said that technical and software support for online initiatives will come from political strategist Prashant Kishore and his team that will give important updates and suggestions at regular intervals.
The social media cell, sources said, will focus mainly on the BJP and largely ignore SP and BSP unless there is a major issue that needs to be countered.
