BJP vs AAP: Taking the battle to social media

Armed with state-of-the-art laptops, computers and high-speed internet connections, a team of a dozen young IT professionals supported by hundreds of volunteers on the ground are heading the BJP’s ‘war room’ for the Delhi assembly polls and working round-the-clock to counter their arch rivals - the AAP.

Set up at the Delhi BJP headquarters at 14, Pandit Pant Marg earlier this month, the war room has professionals, some of whom work part-time or have taken a sabbatical from their jobs, to critically analyse posts, comments and tweets on Facebook and Twitter that talk about the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its policies or leaders.

According to Sumeet Bhasin, who heads the BJP’s Information Technology (IT) cell under which the war room has been set up, the party’s top leadership has specifically asked the team to be “aggressive” on the social media.

“War rooms are set up before every election but this time we have intensified our efforts and the results are showing. We were not this active earlier,” Bhasin adding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s liking for technology and social media acted as a major push.

According to him, the number of members of the party’s Facebook page rose from around 11 lakh to over 13 lakh in just four weeks.

In addition, the page has registered their supremacy in terms of engagement and reach in Delhi, much ahead of the AAP. “On an average the BJP posts on Facebook are getting over 10,000 likes while the posts from AAP are liked by around 5,000 people,” he said. Bhasin credits the achievement to his team of youngsters, who not only analyse Facebook posts and tweets, but also scout for potential volunteers.