Obama effect on BJP’s Malhotra

The grandchildren of BJP’s chief ministerial candidate V.K. Malhotra are trying to replicate a feat Barack Obama’s team pulled off on the worldwide web, reports Naziya Alvi.

The grandchildren of BJP’s chief ministerial candidate V.K. Malhotra are trying to replicate a feat Barack Obama’s team pulled off on the worldwide web.

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Malhotra’s 21-year-old granddaughter Medha and grandson Akshay have created a group on the social networking site Facebook to invite people to vote for him. The group, called ‘VK Malhotra for Delhi CM’, already has 172 registered members.

During the US elections, Obama’s team ensured his campaign had a strong presence on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, BlackPlanet and Linked In. On MySpace and Facebook, the members crossed over 5 lakh.

Medha, a National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, student, said: “We’re working on grandpa’s website.”

Akshay, a Class XI student of Modern School, Vasant Vihar, has also been promoting topics like “Vote for BJP instead of Congress” and scribbling on pages of an anti-Sheila Dikshit virtual group — 10,000 people against Sheila Dikshit — created by a South Delhi schoolgirl. Interestingly, the infamous BRT corridor makes the profile’s picture.

The Congress’s online campaign, on the other hand, is restricted to their official website. “We haven’t yet gone to social networking sites,” said Sanjay Puri, in-charge of the party’s IT campaign team.

Sridevi Sarkar, of Net marketing solutions firm Webisdom, said many candidates want campaigns on the lines of Obama. “You will soon find a few blogs too,” she said.