Election 2019: Congress focuses on online campaigning

With the Lok Sabha election just days away, the Congress has decided to focus more on campaigning via social media. Its six representatives from Mumbai have been instructed to be more active on social media.

Lesson from BJP

The trend of focusing on campaigning on social media started by the ruling party, BJP, that helped it attract a large number of netizens, played a pivotal role in the Lok Sabha election in 2014. The Congress seems to have made note of this. Milind Deora, president of the Mumbai Congress, is known to be tech savvy and is a former minister of state for communications and information technology. He has instructed candidates to interact with people on social media, especially on Twitter and Facebook.

Deora shows way

Speaking to mid-day, Deora said, "We will have some dynamic activity on social media soon. The six representatives have been instructed to be more active on such platforms." On Thursday, Deora uploaded a 4.38-minute video in which he spoke to the youth of India, and focused on job generation.

The picturisation of the video is different from the kind of videos generally posted by politicians. The new city Congress president is seen sitting casually at a table in what is probably his office, with his MacBook open in the background.

The table also has books on it. Within 24 hours of the video's release, where he mainly spoke about job creation, it received around 12,000 views on Twitter. Deora said there will be more such vibrant and friendly videos from the other five candidates, too, to reach out to more youth. "All the candidates will shoot their own videos to present their views and reach out to more people," he added.

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