The new means: social networking sites, SMSes, college visits

The political parties are going hi-tech in their bid to woo the strong base of six lakh young voters in Pune. As young voters will be decisive in these elections, candidates are reaching out to this lot through SMSes and social networking websites. Some parties have even started visiting college campuses.

An IT and educational hub, Pune constitutes a lot of young and tech-savvy population. Of 18 lakh voters in Pune, there are around six lakh voters aged between 18 and 40.

Congress candidate Suresh Kalmadi has launched a website, www.sureshkalmadi.org, and invited suggestions for a Vision 2020 for Pune. “We are getting a good response to the idea. We have received around 25,000 suggestions, mostly from young people about what they think of Pune and how the city should be in 2020,” said Shankar Kalmani of Friends of Kalmadi.

Kalmadi has also been active on the social networking sites, facebook and twitter. “During our journey from one point to the other during campaign, he himself interacts with people on these sites and answer their queries,” Kalmani said.

He said software engineers and students frequently visit Kalmadi’s profile. “We have also started visiting colleges and hope to reach 100 colleges and private institutes in a few days,” said Kalmani. “We have been distributing leaflets on campuses about vision 2020,” he said.

The BJP is also not far behind. With the launch of www.anilshirole.com , BJP candidate Anil Shirole has also started reaching the young voters. Siddharth Shirole, who manages the website, said, “we have also created a friends group on facebook. Shirole will start answering the questions of people very soon. We will also start a community ‘friends of Pune’ on our website, where suggestions regarding the development of the city will be invited.”

“The youth want a candidate of clean image and we will be banking on this notion to reach out to them with the track record of our candidate,” said Shirole.

The BJP IT cell is also active at the state level. “We have around 1,000 communities on Orkut and some communities have over 30,000 members,” said Sujit Shilamkar, state president of BJP IT cell. “We have now planned meetings of these community members in metros. We conducted a meeting in Mumbai and plan to conduct some meetings in Pune and Nashik,” he said.

Shilamkar said the party had installed bluetooth machines at famous food joints; hang out places and restaurants in Mumbai. “We send SMSes through the facility. Of course, it is up to the voter to accept the SMS or not. We have given that option too. We will be soon installing some machines in Pune,” he said.

Bahujan Samaj Party candidate D S Kulkarni is talking to young people through his blog on his website www.dskforpune.com .

“We have uploaded excerpts of his interview with actor Rahul Solarpurkar on youtube. He has talked about why he had joined the BSP,” said Sunil Mane who looks after Kulkarni’s campaign.

Mane said Kulkarni is also addressing issues like economic recession and providing suggestions on how to face it. “We have been conducting meetings of groups of young entrepreneurs and professionals in Pune to address the issues related to recession. The subjects like ban on outsourcing in the US are also discussed,” he said.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena is also planning an SMS campaign to attract the young voters. “We will finalise everything by Monday. Presently, we are meeting people on one-on-one basis,” said Prakash Dhamdhere, spokesperson.