Narendra Modi, Congress take Gujarat campaign online

NEW DELHI, INDIA: As the Gujarat Assembly election is round the corner, Chief Minister Narendra Modi, a member of Twitter (with more than 1 million followers), is leaving no stone unturned. To counter his satirical overtones, the opposition Congress is no mood to lag behind.

The state election commission is apparently miffed with both BJP and Congress unleashing smear campaigns against each other in Cyberspace. The local development too has now entered into Web parlance.

The Web hoopla galore, despite state's Internet penetration is just 11 per cent. Gujarat, as on March 31, had 12.38 lakh Internet connections including 8.64 lakh broadband and 3.74 lakh narrowband users, says TRAI.

Gujrat runs close to 40 e-Governance programs and many of them have won laurels. But ironically, households' Internet connections account for just 4 per cent of the state's population.

These discouraging figures could not deter candidates in poll fray. They are no longer restricted to virtual constituencies. With no poll panel regulation, the campaign managers of both political outfits, are leveraging Internet dauntlessly.

The Web 2.0 tussle is not disparaging though. With multitude of pages, comments and counter-comments on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, the Gujarat election is all set to become fierce.

Congress has on Facebook, started 'Join Hands for Change' campaign to put forth Central government's proposed initiatives as well as to talk about rural Gujarat and farmers' plight. The community attracted more than 60,000 likes, so far.

BJP, on the other hand, perceived it as an attack to its robust Internet presence. Now to resist it, the party has recently created 'Gujarat Truth' page on Facebook, which represents it's decade-long governance achievements.

"Gujarat Truth is an online platform which offers you stories based on factual data, articles, pictures and infographics on Gujarat's growth story, says the community moderator. It has, however, enticed close to 4,000 likes till now.