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Bhubaneswar, Jan. 6: Placards, slogans and rallies are a passé; gizmos and apps have become the latest campaign tools to woo the voters.
Social media, too, has become a major tool to garner support for the candidates in the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls.
The candidates are placing their agendas on tablets, smart phones and laptops so that the tech savvy voters can easily access the information they need.
Former information technology (IT) professional-cum-candidate for the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) Linkan Subudhi has intensified her campaign with a team of 10 young BTech graduates, who have already loaded the list of more than 20,000 voters in eight tablets, several smart phones and also on a laptop.
“Finding a voter’s name from the booklet published by the State Election Commission is a time consuming process as the names are not there in an alphabetical order, but according to the house numbers, so we have prepared a separate list,’’ said Shantanu, who is working with Linkan for the poll campaign.
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The lists on the gadgets are, however, in an alphabetical order and with the search option on the tabs, smart phones or the laptop at the temporary election office, finding names of voters has become easy and within a minute a voter can get to know his details.
“Distributing small pushing cards also need paper, but with this mode of finding names through the gadgets also help in saving papers, so we are also contributing to an environmental cause by saving trees,’’ Linkan said.
She is contesting from ward No. 8 in Chandrasekharpur.
Ajit Dash, an independent candidate from ward No. 13 is using the short message service (SMS) to connect to the 15,000 voters.
“I am also considering the option to put my posts on the social media sites so that people in touch with the media can extend me support,’’ he added.
Although the parties with socialistic background traditionally shy away from the use of social media for poll publicity, this time the candidates from such parties can be seen posting on Facebook wall.
In many pockets such as Nageswar Tangi (ward No. 55) BJD candidate Seema Nayak is, however, using traditional medium such as posters, banners and pushing cards.
“In our ward voters are more than 10,500 but during polling less than 35 per cent actually come to vote and from them nearly 85 per cent belong to the below poverty line category, so in the old Bhubaneswar area use of social media cannot make a big difference though it might help in the posh localities,’’ said former councillor and Seema’s husband Nrupesh.
However, apart from Linkan BJD candidate Pritinanda Routray from ward No. 6 and Independent candidate Deepak Mohapatra from ward No. 52 are campaigning through the social media apart from using the traditional publicity materials.