Leaders have also been instructed to like, share and retweet each post made by the MPCC, as well as have WhatsApp groups of booth level workers.
New Delhi: Elections to the Madhya Pradesh assembly will be held in about three months, and those aspiring for a Congress ticket need to get cracking — on social media, that is.
According to ANI, the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee has issued a letter, making it compulsory for all state and district-level office-bearers, sitting MLAs and ticket aspirants to be active on social media.
Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) writes in a letter to ticket aspirants, 'candidates in upcoming polls must have 15,000 likes on their FB page, 5000 followers on Twitter,& a WhatsApp group of booth-level workers.They must like&retweet every post on MPCC's twitter account' pic.twitter.com/tvrh9aAVJp
— ANI (@ANI) September 3, 2018
Not only does each leader need to have a Facebook and Twitter account, they also need to have a minimum of 15,000 likes and 5,000 followers respectively. The leaders have also been instructed to like, share and retweet each post made by the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC), as well as have WhatsApp groups of booth level workers to keep their ears to the ground.
All the aspirants have to submit their social media account status to the MPCC’s IT cell of the Madhya Pradesh Congress by 15 September.
“If a person is active on social media, it shows that a person is connected with the people,” MPCC spokesperson Ravi Saxena told ThePrint.
Saxena also highlighted the fact that nowadays “everyone has a phone in their hand” and “one should use the modern technology in order to reach out to the people”.
Significance of social media
Social media has become an important aspect of elections in India over the last few years. Amit Shah, national president of the BJP, had issued a similar diktat ahead of the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, asking each ticket aspirant to get 25,000 followers on Facebook and Twitter.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi too in March 2018, told each BJP MP to ensure 3 lakh likes on their individual Facebook pages.
Also read: Modi says no more ‘dirt’ on social media – Crackdown on hate speech or BJP political gimmick?
‘Cyber warriors’ vs ‘Rajiv ke Sipahi’
In June, Shivraj Singh Dabi, the BJP’s IT cell head for Madhya Pradesh, had announced that 65,000 ‘cyber warriors’ had been deployed by the party to campaign for the upcoming elections.
The state Congress, meanwhile, said it had set up a team of 4,000 people known as ‘Rajiv ke Sipahi’ (soldiers of Rajiv Gandhi). Dharmendra Bajpai, the Congress’s IT cell chief for MP at the time, had said WhatsApp would be the party’s biggest weapon.
Also read: How many light bulbs does it take to change Rahul Gandhi?
Chief Election Commission O.P. Rawat has issued an assurance that any circulation of false content on social media will be dealt with severely. Rawat said a committee of cyber experts has been constituted to keep a check on the circulation of offensive and false information, and politicians sharing false information on the social media will be banned.
This can at best be one facet of mobilisation and public contact. Not a substitute for politicians who are grounded, meet their constituents regularly, help them with small day to day problems, the shakhas of the Shiv Sena in Bombay being a good example.