With the election fever catching up fast, the Telugu Desam Party has taken to social media to attract netizens to its fold.
Tech-savvy TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu has asked the party’s poll campaign managers to leverage the advantages offered by the social media networks like Facebook and Twitter to reach out to youth and educate them to bring back the TDP to power. The campaign managers claim that they are targeting the section, aged between 18 and 25, that depends more on online news rather than TV and other modes of communication.
The initiative comes next to the TDP’s promise of extensively using IVRS (interactive voice response system) for selection of candidates of people’s choice. The TDP opened a platform, www.bringbabuback.org, for youth to register their names online as volunteers and participate in the party’s election campaign.
Over 20,000 volunteers registered their names so far and are actively interacting with their online friends across the State about the promises made by the TDP covering all sections, the youth in particular. These volunteers are presently engaged in interaction through social media networks. “They will be given material and training online so that they can educate the people, particularly those in the rural areas, as the election approaches,” a campaign manager associated with the process told The Hindu .
The main theme of the campaign, according to him, is to educate youth aspiring for better opportunities so that they can, in turn, reach out people and disseminate the information to the grassroots level voters. “These youth, once educated about the party’s policies, will surely influence voters in their vicinity. Assurances like the scheme announced by Mr. Naidu to leverage technology for women’s safety went viral on the Net,” he said.
Thrust of the initiative, launched about two months ago, is to ensure that people in the rural areas enrol themselves as voters. A door-to-door campaign on this has already been launched. The volunteers had assured the TDP leadership that they would personally take part in campaign full time, starting a fortnight before the election till the completion of the poll process.
