TN urban local body elections: Whatsapp turns new poll battleground
CHENNAI: The ubiquitous WhatsApp has become the new political platform for TN parties to reach voters in the urban local body polls. All major parties have started creating WhatsApp groups to popularise their ideology, poll promises, quotable quotes of leaders, and welfare schemes, and to use the social media tool to counter their opponents.
Thanks to the popularity of WhatsApp, which is more widely used by commoners than Facebook or Twitter, political parties are exhorting their cadres to use it more as part of their political outreach. While Chief Minister MK Stalin last Monday urged cadres to use WhatsApp to spread the achievements of the DMK government and counter the “false charges” of the opposition, BJP state president K Annamalai, at a meeting in Coimbatore on Monday, told BJP workers to concentrate on WhatsApp as 90 per cent of urban voters use it.
According to sources, since it is easy to create WhatsApp groups, no dedicated funding is done by political parties and enthusiastic workers create content of their own or share the content generated by their party groups with people they know. According to DMK sources, IT wing cadres of the party share leaders’ statements and documents on party’s achievements from time to time and individual workers pick them up and share them with their groups.
Since local body elections are primarily about local issues and the electorate is confined to five to 10 streets per ward, it becomes easier for candidates to generate content that’s relevant to a particular group of voters. Since the Dravidian parties have strong grassroots connect, they have at least one or two people on each street connected to the party, say sources. During the verification of voters’ list, all major political parties collect mobile number of voters and reach them easily through WhatsApp messages, party sources said. Candidates create as many groups as they want depending on the size of the electorate and needs.
MM Balu of DMK from Pudukkottai says, “Already we have WhatsApp groups for party cadres for every street and every wing. Now, we are trying to form WhatsApp groups by including voters in each ward to inform them about ward details, campaign schedule, grievances of voters, and to highlight the failures of former representatives.” Several BJP functionaries, too, said that they have instructed cadres to work on WhatsApp group campaigns.
Not just established parties, independents too depend on WhatsApp campaigns. According to Jeyachandran, nephew of a contestant at Lalgudi municipality in Tiruchy district, “Already most people are part of WhatsApp groups such as street groups, temple groups, school groups, and residents’ groups. Hence, we use these groups as our campaign platform.” We have formed 10 new WhatsApp groups to reach voters, he says.
“We collect phone numbers of voters and influential people in the ward to carry out digital campaign,” says Dr Prabakharan, brother of a woman candidate in Chennai’s ward 183.