Ahmedabad: The Gujarat unit of BJP has launched an IT blitzkrieg to woo young voters in the state. The state BJP website has been updated with the latest information about party activities, speeches and videos of star campaigners such as L K Advani, Narendra Modi and Rajnath Singh. The party's IT cell is also planning to flood internet with videos, speeches, wallpapers, screensaves and songs praising Modi and other leaders.
"We will be using six different tools to communicate with the young and tech-savvy voters -- website, email, SMSs, video sharing, Orkut (social networking sites) and blogging," said BJP IT Cell convenor Shashiranjan Yadav, a Mathematics lecturer in M G Science College here.
"We will also introduce RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds on the website along with pod casting. With RSS, the user will be informed immediately about any update on the website be it text, picture or podcast," Yadav said. Ringtones and caller tunes can also be downloaded from the website, he said.
Besides the party website, Yadav said the state unit would also take the help of video sharing website YouTube. "We have decided to upload speeches of leaders like Advani, Modi and Rajnath on YouTube," he said.
The state unit also plans to make short films on poll-related issues and upload it on YouTube and social networking sites. "We will be making some 15-20 short films using handycams and mobilephones on poll-related issues and post it on the Gujarat BJP website, YouTube and Orkut so as to reach out to more number of people across the state," he said.
Yadav said the state BJP had recently organised a workshop to train party workers to produce such short-films. "We also had a couple of resource persons from IIM-A, to help our workers with the basic techniques of film making and editing using software on a normal desktop," Yadav added.
The IT cell plans to send bulk emails and SMSs to voters during the election campaign. "We have a strong team of over 75 people who have been working on evolving strategies to use the modern communication tools for the poll campaign," he said. Yadav said for the first time they are inviting volunteers to be taken as party workers and already over 300 have registered for the same.
Congress kiosks
Meanwhile, the Congress party is setting up hundreds of Internet kiosks across the country to promote an online campaign to register youth members and inform them about the central government's initiatives, party sources said today.
A Congress worker said the kiosks will have customised software to make them as interactive as possible. There will also be an option for the youth to send messages to Rahul Gandhi from these kiosks.
Party sources said a total of 600 kiosks will be set up across the country. They will also be used for regular transmission of the key excerpts of the speeches of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi.
