1st phase polls: Candidates take battle to social media

BHOPAL: The use and impact of social media in the upcoming LS election could be well understood from the fact that barring only two out of the 12 candidates who are in the fray in first phase of parliamentary elections, six each from the BJP and the Congress — have presence on social media platforms.
The two candidates who — going by their affidavits — are not on social media platforms, are both from Congress, namely Samrat Singh from Balaghat and Fundelal Singh Marko from Shahdol constituency.Remaining candidates are active on social media with some having followers in lakhs.
Nath scion, Nakul Nath (Chhindwara), for example, has close to six lakh followers cumulatively on three major social media platforms, while his rival Vivek Kumar Sahu also has accounts and almost 45K followers cumulatively.
In Sidhi too, both Congress’ Kamleshwar Patel and BJP’s Dr Rajesh Mishra are active on all the three social media platforms. However, Kamleshwar with lakhs of followers has an edge.
In Balaghat constituency while INC’s Samrat Singh has informed that he has no social media presence, his rival BJP’s Bharti Pardi has considerable presence on the three major social media platforms.
In Mandla, BJP’s Faggan Singh Kulaste and INC’s Omkar Singh Markam both are active on the three social media platforms and are cumulativeluy having lakhs of followers on these platforms.
In Jabalpur constituency, Congress’ Dinesh Yadav has presence on two social media platforms but has less followers, while BJP’s Ashish Dubey has more followers on the three platforms than is INC counterpart.
In tribal Shahdol constituency, while Congress Fundelal Singh Marko has informed EC that he has no social media pages, his rival BJP’s Himadri Singh has considerable presence on social media platforms.