Polls in mind, State leaders hook on to social media

Sensing early polls in 2019 regional parties in Jharkhand have begun girding their loins, though with more vigour and enthusiasm this time to beat the seemingly powerful NDA. So much so that some of the most traditional and orthodox political party leaders have begun sharpening their arrows and testing them on popular social media platforms twitter, facebook and whatsapp.

Be it Jharkhand Mukti Morcha executive President Hemant Soren or Jharkhand Vikas Morcha chief Babulal Marandi, the leaders are on to the work at cyberspace.  With 4,325 followers, Hemant Soren’s twitter handle continues to raise issues like Patthalgadi, religious conversion laws, tribal land among others. Hemant has tweeted 1,204 times on several issues on national and local interest and is re-tweeted and commented by people with similar schools of thought frequently.

Soren also has an official facebook page with 44,000 likes. It states that he is the Leader of Opposition in the State Assembly and former Chief Minister of Jharkhand. It also enlightens visitors of the page briefly about Soren’s early life, career and his stint at the first Chief Minister of the State alongwith polices of JMM.  

However, the JMM Executive President has not hired any agency for handling the social media accounts. People close to Soren said that he handles his social media account on his own and also tweets and posts issues of relevance from time to time.

JVM chief Babulal Marandi on the other hand has a professional working for his twitter and facebook accounts. The first chief minister of the State, who has become active on the social media very recently, has a twitter account with just 39 followers and 113 tweets. But, his facebook page has huge likes of 71,000. The seasoned politician can be seen sowing paddy seeds in his fields to giving speech in huge rallies and conferences on the page.

“Yes we have opened the twitter account of Babulal Ji very recently but the facebook page is quite popular with 71,000 views. There are videos on the page with 1.5 lakh views. Form tomorrow we will start an aggressive campaign against the NDA on social media although it is early for the polls social media needs to be activated for opinion building,” said Joyguru Banerjee, a PR expert of Tagudyog Digital Solutions Private Limited, handling the JVM Chief’s social media account.

Notably, the BJP and the Congress State unit leaders are already active on social media commenting on national and local issues. BJP has a gamut of its leaders on social media, while the Congress State unit leaders are also getting Internet savvy opening social media accounts to follow their seniors at the national and State level.