Politicians are now with it, try to Net in voters

MUMBAI, AUG 26: With political parties having neither enough time to campaign for the Lok Sabha polls nor any clearcut issue to convince ...

MUMBAI, AUG 26: With political parties having neither enough time to campaign for the Lok Sabha polls nor any clearcut issue to convince the electorate, a media hype has been engineered about various political persona going on cyberspace, according to net users.

Having witnessed a proxy war in cyberspace between Pakistan and India during the initial stages of the Kargil conflict, many net surfers expected a similar heated 8220;cyberwar8221; among the political parties but there is no excitement in visiting their websites, according to some who frequent such sites regularly.

A website for self-propagation has become a fad as politicians in India too had to catch up with it to show that they are at par with the computer generation.

A recent survey, meanwhile, has shown that politicians in Maharashtra, familiar with the latest communication gadgets like cell phones and satellite phones, are yet to catch up with the Net.

The politicians seemed to be reluctant to interact with the computer literate as one findsthat only some of the major national and regional parties and few personalities are on the internet.

Several parties like the Nationalist Congress Party NCP, Samajwadi Party, Republican Party of India and National Minorities Party NMP are yet to launch their websites.

NMP, which campaigns through a network of mosques in the country, is considering a cyber site for itself. A party spokesperson said, 8220;we already have a software called Rizvi software and we might make use of the existing facility. The planning is still in the initial phase.8221;

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BJP8217;s Maharashtra spokesperson Prakash Jawdekar said his party8217;s main aim behind launching the website was to catch votes attracting the electorate through the net. BJP has an interactive website and lots of queries are received and answered, Jawdekar said.

State home minister and BJP candidate Gopinath Munde is one of the few politicians to have a website of his own. Congress too has an interactive website but in the metropolis there seemed to be not muchinteraction with the voters through it. Local candidate Murli Deora is still preparing a website for his propaganda, according to his office sources.

Shiv Sena spokesperson Kiran Wadukar said the party was getting a response on their website even from their rural voters. While some political cyber watchers said they were curious to watch anti-BJP and anti-Congress sites originating from abroad, others including scientists, doctors and businessmen, who use the internet extensively, seemed to show very little interest in visiting the political sites.