Solanki for using 50% poll budget in social media campaigning

Bharatsinh Solanki

Senior Congress leaders on Sunday laid emphasis on the use of social media in the run-up to the Assembly elections later this year. During the party’s Navsarjan Cyber Meet here, GPCC president Bharatsinh Solanki said Congress’s IT Cell of will get all necessary facilities, and also advocated diverting 50 per cent of the party’s election budget towards social media campaigning. Gujarat Congress has been running its election campaign under ‘Navsarjan Gujarat’ tagline.

The meet was organised to provide useful tips and material to Congress workers and office bearers in effectively using social media to increase the party’s reach among public and to allay alleged falsehood being spread by the rival BJP. Apart from Solanki, the meet was attended by senior leaders like Ahmed Patel, Arjun Modhwadia and Jagdish Thakor, besides party MLAs and workers. In his address, Solanki said, “We cannot fight BJP in terms of money. But, we can fight them through guerrilla warfare…” “In elections, Facebook has wider reach than Twitter. So, I say that we should work more to increase our reach on Facebook,” said Solanki, minutes before news of senior Congress leader Shankersinh Vaghela unfollowing all 30 Twitter handles came.

Ahmed Patel congratulated IT Cell volunteers of Gujarat Congress, and asked them to use social media both for election and for uniting the country. Chairman of Gujarat Congress IT Cell Rohan Gupta said it has 2,000 active members on Facebook, more than 1,000 active members on Twitter and more than 4 lakh members on Whatsapp on around 6,000 groups.