BJP wants to talk to you via Twitter, Facebook

To “ensure a better connect” with the residents, the Delhi unit of the BJP is not merely asking for their telephone numbers and email IDs - they will be collecting details of voters’ Twitter handles and Facebook profiles. Neelam Pandey reports.

Senior leaders and office bearers of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will soon be seen making a beeline outside the homes of Delhi’s voters.

However, to “ensure a better connect” with the residents, the Delhi unit of the BJP is not merely asking for their telephone numbers and email IDs - they will be collecting details of voters’ Twitter handles and Facebook profiles.

Explaining the inclusion of these new contacts in their feedback, a senior BJP leader said: “Technology is going to play a crucial role in the upcoming elections and the parties have realised that. More and more people use social networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter, to express themselves; we can use this medium to connect with them. The traditional methods will remain but we have to change with time too.”

The party has decided to launch a door-to-door campaign beginning Thursday in all the 70 assembly segments as part of its mass contact programme called “Ghar-Ghar BJP”, wherein these feedback forms would be handed out to the residents.

Sources said this shift to “connecting with people directly” rather than holding rallies is being done after Delhi election in-charge Nitin Gadkari showed his discontent over lack of connect with the voters.

Right from Delhi unit president Vijay Goel, a number of senior party leaders including VK Malhotra, Harshvardhan and office bearers will participate in the campaign by visiting homes and meeting families personally.

“I will be visiting families individually at Majnu Ka Tila. We are focussing on the positive campaign by offering solutions to the problems being faced by people,” said Goel.

Some of the questions that’ll be asked through the feedback forms include whether people are satisfied with the 10-year rule of the Manmohan Singh government at the Centre, followed by whether they want to see Narendra Modi as the next prime minister of India.