Tamil Nadu urban local body elections: Parties move to WhatsApp for campaigning

Besides bigger parties like DMK and BJP, independent candidates have also have taken the election campaigning to WhatsApp

Political parties contesting in the Tamil Nadu urban local body elections have captured all social media platforms, including the pervasive WhatsApp.

The major parties contesting the urban local body polls have created their own WhatsApp groups to popularise their ideology, poll promises, quotable quotes of leaders, and welfare schemes among the people.

According to sources, quoted by The New Indian Express, creating a WhatsApp group is effortless and requires no funding, hence the political parties and their enthusiastic workers are creating content on their own and sharing it on the platform with their contacts.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin urged DMK cadres to spread the achievements of the DMK government and counter the ‘false charges’ of the Opposition using WhatsApp. Using the same strategy, BJP state president K Annamalai told the BJP workers to focus on WhatsApp for election campaigning, the publication reported.

“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,” MM Balu of DMK from Pudukkottai told the publication.

Not just the bigger parties like DMK and BJP have taken the election campaigning to WhatsApp but independent candidates have also stepped into it.

“We collect phone numbers of voters and influential people in the ward to carry out the digital campaign,” Prabakharan, brother of a woman candidate in Chennai’s ward 183, told the publication.

Check out the latest videos from DH: